


Seraphim

by chekcough



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Infertility, Miscarriage, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 74,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21718681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chekcough/pseuds/chekcough
Summary: After Mulder returns from the dead, Scully tries to pick up the pieces. AU, with Mulder/Scully relationship pre-established after FTF. Implied character suicide. (Originally published 2018)
Relationships: Charlie Scully/Original Character(s), Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 28
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

Cold numbed the tip of Dana Scully's nose and her hands, just out of reach of the small space heater they'd provided at the Henrico County Coroner's autopsy center in Richmond. Her left leg had fallen asleep and she lifted her foot, shaking it to try and work some blood back into the extremity. She twisted her slight torso, enough to release tension, but not enough to disturb her work on the table.

The autopsy hadn't been easy to perform. She had to stop every few minutes to wipe her runny nose on her scrubs or de-glove and blow it, walking away from the table and scrubbing in all over again before coming back. Her voice on the tape would be punctured by sniffles and sneezes contained within her sterile mask and her voice would sound even more nasal than it normally did.

It was late when she finally finished. Her notes were meticulous but still needed to be typed up. She'd do it the next morning. Now all she could think of was getting home and falling into bed, so exhausted she knew it would be dreamless. She could use some dreamless sleep.

Double Fantasy circled around on every radio station, throwing her back to seventeen. She mouthed the lyrics to the 60s-ish melody of one her secret favorites.

_It's time to spread our wings and fly_

_Don't let another day go by,_

And then the sound of the comma, the afterthought of _my love_. How neatly it all fit together.

"That was (Just Like) Starting Over, sung by John Lennon off his 1980 album _Double Fantasy_ ," the radio announced. "Fifteen years ago today, the young Beatle was shot by a desperate fan and killed in New York City. _Double Fantasy_ was his last recorded album, and featured songs sung by him and his then partner Yoko Ono."

Of course. December eighth. She remembered Melissa's copy of the record, leaning against the dirty couch in her apartment by the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, a loft she shared with her then boyfriend whose name Dana forgot. Some pothead who worked in a record store and played guitar while Melissa continued her weird paintings and waitressed for change. Dana remembered her sister in that messy living room, swaying to the music in a vintage dress she'd traded for a domino bracelet, torn leggings, those spike-heeled pumps from Goodwill. _Why can't I be more like her?_ she'd thought at seventeen, visiting her sister after all her college applications had already been sent in.

_Double Fantasy_. John and Yoko pressed together for a kiss they would never finish. People were always trashing Yoko Ono, blaming her for breaking up the Beatles, but Dana thought they were just jealous that John preferred Yoko to some bloated megaband. Nobody ever really loved a lover, because love was a private party, and nobody got on the guest list. She liked the pictures of Yoko and John in their white bed, their frizzy hippie hair.

Out her car window the poor area of Richmond sprawled by the interstate, the matchbox apartment buildings with towels and laundry out to dry even at night in December, the low slung bungalows, the odd playgrounds tumbled beside the road like a child's bedspread scattered with toys. Dana tried to keep her eyes on the road as she headed south toward her own apartment and thought about the guy who'd shot Lennon. Shot by a _desperate_ fan. On the news, fans were always desperate. The saddest thing was that she hadn't even been shocked. It had just seemed part of the way things were heading; Ronald Reagan, greenheads running everything...

She drove back to Laburnum Avenue in the rattly Volvo, a dry-blood red relic she'd been forced to rent that morning when her own car's engine wouldn't start. It was normally a fifteen minute drive, but she hit a line of cars with their lights on snaking down the exit in front of her. Why were they going so slow? She honked a little, feeling vulnerable as her car didn't quite make it onto the exit and stuck out into traffic. Things began to move a bit and she wove and passed, reminding herself a little of Mulder, until she saw that it was a hearse. Mortified, she turned off into the parking lot of a convenience store and stopped, red-faced. How was she supposed to know -a line of cars crawling along after rush hour with their lights on?

She drove the rest of the way under the speed limit, parked in front of her apartment, took the mail from the box, and turned her key in the lock. It squeaked and scraped in its usual way. Finally inside, she dropped her keys in the red coin bowl and mumbled, "Honey, I'm home" to no one.

Silence. Empty sofa, framed photographs and art that had fit in Georgetown looked spaced out and lonely on these walls, through the door to the kitchen were empty chairs. The only sounds came when she slid off her low heels on the uncarpeted wood floor of the entryway. It had been two years since she'd seen him, standing in her kitchen in Georgetown, making coffee. Telling her he was going away. "It'll only be two days," he'd said.

She'd stopped and looked up on her way in from the living room, finishing her lipstick, accurate even without a mirror. "Where?"

"To see my mother," he'd said, "she's not doing so well and I should...I should really go see her, make sure everything's okay."

It was uncharacteristically thoughtful of him, she remembered thinking, then corrected herself, made it seem less crass. He had never been what she'd call family oriented, unless you counted an all-consuming obsession with finding his missing sister. She'd only ever heard him mention his mother or father on rare occasions, and as far as she knew didn't visit on holidays. This past year alone he'd spent Thanksgiving with his F.B.I partner and her mother, and her younger brother Charlie's family.

"What do you mean, 'not doing so well'?" she'd asked.

He set the coffee to brew and leaned on the counter as she walked in, setting her lipstick on the table. After watching her for a moment he smiled at the little concerned line on her forehead and went forward, put his arms around her in his sleepy morning way. She turned her cheek to his chest to spare him a lipstick-stained tie. "Don't worry about it," he murmured into her hair, "I'll be back in two days." He kissed the crown of her head.

In her memory, she held onto him, her eyes closed, drinking in his smell, pine and some peculiar chemistry of his own. In her memory he held her for the longest time, crushing her to him, she could feel every rib in his chest.

She missed him like fire. His presence had been a steady, unwavering flame, and to have it flicker...

Four days later she threw the mail on the table by the door in her Georgetown apartment where the phone sat silent. She'd called him five times already, but he hadn't answered. If he didn't call or come home soon, she was going up there, she didn't care how much he didn't want her to worry about it. Two days was one thing, but four without an explanation was another. Two days had been the weekend, and now she'd had to answer to Skinner that morning as to Mulder's whereabouts. Used to covering for him, she'd explained the situation and hoped Mulder wouldn't mind her revealing some of his personal information, and hoped her own concern hadn't bled through too much in the meeting. She'd managed to remain busy downstairs, but all she was doing was waiting for him to come back.

It felt strange to be in their office alone. There was barely any evidence of her presence here. It was all Mulder. Without him, it took on the quality of a stage set where the actors hadn't yet come on. She sat in his chair, spinning idly counterclockwise.

She went to his apartment that night and lay on the bed, the fragrant linens that smelled like Mulder and her perfume pooled together. She kicked off her shoes and crawled under the covers, white on white in the colorless light. It was almost Christmas. She needed to buy the rest of the presents for her family. Mulder wanted to buy the tree together, this week. His present was already hiding in its spot in her top dresser drawer. Maybe he was hiding something here for her. Maybe that was why he'd wanted a tree, when he normally didn't care about things like that. Last Friday he'd cut a paper snowflake out of the first page of a botched expense report and grinned at the expression on her face. Of course he'd be back. Just another day. They were going to buy the tree together.

She was thinking about snowflakes when the phone rang in the dark. Flinging herself out of bed so fast her head reeled, she got to her phone and grabbed it before the third ring. "Mulder, thank God, where-"

"Excuse me, this is Inspector Brooks..."

"Oh."

"I'm from the Henrico County Coroner's Office. To whom am I speaking, please?"

Oh, Mulder, not again. "This is Dana Scully. What happened?"

"Your phone number was found on a motel registration. We're in the process of running fingerprints, but tell me, has there been someone missing?"

"Um, I-" Scully's voice caught, dry, in her mouth.

She heard the shuffling of papers. "White male. Registered as Fox Mulder."

All she heard was the roar of blood in her ears.

"Miss Scully?"

She could barely hold the phone. All the strength had gone out of her arms.

"Do you have any idea who this person might be?" said the voice on the other end, as if nothing had changed.

"Yes," she said. "No." She stumbled and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I don't..."

"This person you're thinking of, how old is he?"

She gripped the sheet and tried to be Agent Scully. "Thirty-seven."

"Height?"

"Six feet."

"Weight?"

She didn't know his weight. "Average."

"Eye color?"

"Green." Please, let him say brown.

"Scars or tattoos?"

She thought of his body. She ran her mind over it like fingers. "A gunshot scar on his right shoulder." She rubbed her face, struggling to grip the phone, trying to listen through the roaring static in her head. “A freckle, on his left hand. Between the thumb and first finger." She made her living on cataloging bodies. It worked independently of her mind, which had shut off. It couldn't be.

There was a pause. "Is there someone who can come with you? We'll need to see you downtown."

Her mother? God, no. "I live in Washington. I'll come myself."

"Miss Scully, I think you should at least have someone drive you."

* * *

She stood on the sidewalk outside Mulder's apartment holding herself together with both arms, as if her guts would spill out onto the concrete if she let go, watching for Skinner's car, which she'd never seen before. It was raining. The road glowed like the surface of the moon as bright headlights swept across it, pockmarked with rain, and a car stopped in front of her. Skinner got out, walked around quickly.

"Jesus, Scully, it's freezing out here. Get in." He opened the passenger door and bundled her inside.

She was still closing the door as Skinner started driving. They moved silently onto the freeway. "I'm sorry, Sir. You're the first person I-"

"It's all right. Don't think anything. It could be anyone."

She hoped to hell it was. Anyone else.

They drove in silence, just the sound of the heater blasting and the repetitive squeak of the windshield wipers against what was becoming a torrential rain. An hour and a half into the drive, when her teeth had finally stopped chattering, the words fell heavily from her mouth.

"We were going to do Christmas together."

Skinner bit the side of his cheek and said nothing. _Don't think anything. It could be anyone._

The coroner's office wasn't up at the hospital, it was down at the bottom, with the trucks and industrial light, a boxy two-story government building, the lettering painted right on the side of the building, HENRICO COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CORONER, Medical Examiner, Forensic Laboratories, Public Services.

Skinner left the car parked in front and they went in together, him in hastily donned dress pants and a clean shirt, her in the leggings she kept at Mulder's place and one of his sweatshirts, no bra. Without her coat and shoulder pads, faced scrubbed clean of makeup, she looked ten years younger. There wasn't an ounce of F.B.I in her tonight. They dashed into the foyer, all brown marble and beige linoleum and patched acoustic ceiling, like the lobby in a building full of cheap dentists. At the counter, a heavy woman looked them up and down. Skinner's serious professionalism, Scully's raccoon-wide eyes, the grey Quantico sweatshirt wet on the shoulders.

"I got a call," Scully said.

The woman just stared.

"An Inspector Brooks, he said -"

"Across the breezeway." The woman pointed to the twin building out the smudged glass doors. "I'll tell him you're here."

They waited on cloth chairs in a smaller lobby, Scully's hands white-knuckled on her knees, her whole being reduced to a pinpoint of fear, like the nucleus of an atom about to be split and blow up the world. She had no mind at all, just the tremor in her right foot that would not stop. It could be anyone. But he had used his real name at a motel, and left her number. And wasn't he in Massachusetts? Oh, God, shouldn't she have called his mother to ask where he was?

She started reciting the periodic table under her breath from rote memory to give some order to it all.

Skinner cleared his throat awkwardly. He was uncomfortable, and scared not by the situation that had brought them here but by her behavior. At four AM he had learned that Dana Scully and Fox Mulder were more than work partners. She wanted to be picked up at his house, wearing his clothes, and told Skinner about their Christmas plans. This wasn't the straight-laced F.B.I agent he'd seen in his office that day, calmly explaining her partner's absence from work. This was a star-crossed lover.

They watched the heavy door into the hall, a little caged window. Before she had even gotten through the noble gasses, a black man in a blue blazer opened the door and stepped into the lobby.

"Miss Scully?"

She stood up.

"Can you come with me? Both of you."

They walked down the hall, the fluorescent light bathing them in its weird green glow. Inspector Brook's office was windowless, small, vomiting books, papers, folders, the walls covered with charts and a list on a blackboard, initials and magnets. They sat in two cold metal chairs, and he took a seat at his desk. "Are you all right, Miss Scully?" he asked.

"Agent Scully," Skinner said softly next to her. She looked up at the title and sat up straighter, practically puking inside. Thank God he hadn't patronized her and called her Dana. She would have crumpled into tears.

"When was the last time you saw your boyfriend, Miss Scully?"

She tripped over her words. "We work together. I last saw him Friday."

"And when did you realize he was missing?"

She just stared at the nameplate on the desk. How long was he missing? She hadn't known he was missing at all. She had just let him go. "I didn't. I still don't. He said he was going out of town. He wasn't even supposed to be in the state."

The man pursed his full lips together and pulled out some white cardboard. "I'm going to have you look at some photographs," Inspector Brooks said. "I want to warn you, they're pretty disturbing. But it's important to know, for everyone."

She didn't bother saying she was a pathologist. She didn't bother saying anything at all. She didn't matter here. Anyone but him. Anyone but him.

White squares in his hands, the backs of two photographs, as he went on talking, talking, explaining about what she would see, _the bullet entered the mouth and exited the back of the head...effect of the_ _gunshot wound_...She nodded, not listening. She wanted to rip those pictures out of his hands. Finally he laid them in front of her on the desk.

A face. Black eyes, like they'd been in a terrible fight. Swollen closed, though they weren't completely closed, God, they should have closed the eyes. Whoever's eyes they were. Not his. It couldn't be. She could only see a little of the hair, there was a sheet all around the head, and those black eyes, a slight rim of blood around the nostrils, the mouth, no, she didn't recognize him, it wasn't Mulder, and yet, how could she be sure? How could she know? He was alive the last time she saw him. "I can't tell. I just don't know," she whispered.

The inspector looked to Skinner, who gave him a curt nod. The inspector looked at them grimly, then said, "I'm sorry."

Skinner led her out. All she could see was the image from the Polaroid, the black eyes. This wasn't real. Mulder was alive. He was up at his mother's house, making sure everything was okay. She pictured him there, painting all the detail she could muster. The trees outside the window. The brightness of the winter sun. How they would laugh about this later. She didn’t remember kissing him before he’d left.

Inspector Brooks came across from the other building and let them through a doorway in the brown marble. They walked down a dirty hall, pinkish beige, the doors all had black kickmarks at the bottom. They came to an elevator, Inspector Brooks held it for them, got in and turned a key in the operating panel, the door shut and the elevator descended. She stared down at the streaky linoleum. _Please, God, let this not be happening_.

The doors opened, and right there, against the grey wall, against a busted water fountain, on a gurney, lay a human form under a white sheet. The smell was different from anything she had ever smelled before in all her days as a pathologist, dirty, like old meat, and Inspector Brooks was saying, "He's not going to look like they do in the funeral home, they've cleaned him up some but he's going to look like the photos, all right? I'm going to lower the sheet now."

He folded back the top of the sheet. The body lay wrapped in another one, a knot like a rose at the chest, the arms folded in, the head covered, there was blood on the sheet, _don't look at that, don't_ _look, only the face_. The bruised eyes, the bruised mouth, lips dark as if he'd been drinking ink, the dark stubble, the handsome eyebrows, the eyelashes, his eyes were not closed. It was him and yet it wasn't. Because he couldn't be dead. She slipped and Skinner caught her, but not in time. "His eyes..." The most diabolical thing she had ever seen. She threw up, on her knees, on the floor. _I_ _should really go see her, make sure everything's okay._

He picked her up and helped her into a chair. She sat with her head between her knees, breathing like an exhausted athlete. Skinner crouched next to her, trying to hold her, vomit all down her chest. Inspector Brooks was covering him again, she got up and yanked down the sheet and laid her face against his sweet horrible one, then recoiled. It was hard, cold. A thing. He'd turned into a thing. _A thing_. "MULDER! GODDAMN IT, MULDER!" she was screaming into his face, but it didn't change. He didn't wake up. He just lay there with his black eyes and the whites showing, and Inspector Brooks covered him up, his hand dark and alive against the sheet. Skinner tugged her away from the gurney.

"Let's go." His voice was hard, final. She started tumbling through all the things they still needed to do, rambling at Skinner. Open an investigation, there was something behind this, he wouldn't do this himself, call his mother, he's up there with her now, I'm sure of it.

On the way to the car Scully fought the urge to vomit again. She wanted to wake up as Dorothy and see Mulder's face peering over the side of the bed, laughing. _Why, you just hit your head!_ But it was no dream and there was no Kansas and he was never coming back. The flame he’d kindled in her chest was snuffed out as quickly as the match had struck.

* * *

In her apartment in Richmond on December eighth, Dana hung up her coat on one of the pegs by the door and walked into the kitchen, opening the cabinet and pulling out a can of lentil soup. Two years ago she'd opened an investigation into Mulder's death. He was buried as Fox William Mulder, and she'd stood by his mother on that dreadful day and tried not to blame her. He hadn't even showed up. That, or he'd lied to his partner and gone off to kill himself, leaving her there in the kitchen in the moment after he'd pressed his lips to her head, when she was content and filled with warmth. She knew now, for certain, that she hadn’t kissed him goodbye, not wanting to stain his lips.

Events came in twos- two days gone turned into four days -two missing, two weeks later the funeral, two months later the X-Files had been closed. Skinner wouldn't let her use F.B.I resources to look into her partner's death any longer, and she drove away the first partner he'd assigned her after only two days. She couldn't believe that Mulder had done it. It was never real. When Skinner asked her why, she'd said, “Because he loved me”, like love had anything to do with it. Suicide was a selfish act, and love was a selfless one. The X-Files were closed and Quantico only needed consults, so she moved to Richmond to take up their conveniently vacant post of the county medical examiner in that same cursed building.

It was almost two years now, almost. In ten days he'd be dead two years. She felt his absence like a collapsed lung. For a few weeks after the funeral she'd been sick every morning and thought by some fluke she was pregnant. Her gut twisted with the irony. Her period came eleven days late, and she’d wept in her bathroom with her eyes squeezed shut so she wouldn’t have to look. It was selfish of her, but sometimes she thought maybe it would have been easier to get through had he left her a child. Because then she'd still have a part of him with her. But what if she'd accidentally planted an emotional burden on those small shoulders. Their baby would never know its father. Suicide ran in families. No, she was better off alone.

Her mother came to help pack up his apartment, not questioning when her daughter wanted to keep old keychains, odd objects that had no relationship to each other, a blanket from his couch, a sweatshirt, and a framed photograph of a little girl Maggie didn't recognize. She didn't question her daughter when she decided to leave the F.B.I and move to Richmond. Dana came home for the holidays.

Her apartment now was a mixture of both of their previous ones. She'd kept her bed but taken his sofa. She'd kept her chairs but added all of his mugs to her cabinet, making space by donating some of her own on repeated trips to Goodwill. Mulder had left her money, left her almost everything, although she hadn't been immediate family. Teena Mulder had been gracious when Dana offered her the contents of his will. She'd gently said No, and they hadn't spoken again. His mother had killed herself earlier this year. Now they were gone. All the Mulders.

As she heated her soup and listened to the teenage girl playing Mendelssohn from next door Dana thought back to the first time he'd kissed her. Really kissed her. It had been at her mother's, of all places, on Thanksgiving. They both knew it would happen eventually. Neither had spoken of the fractured kiss in Mulder's hallway, but the arches of her feet itched whenever she walked down it.

There, in the cold November night on her mother's screened porch, pleasantly full from the meal, they'd talked about family while her mother fawned over Charlie and Ginny's baby daughter in the living room. The fear of change twisted like holly in her belly as his beautiful mouth came near hers, sure as ever. He tasted like the spiced cider they'd drunk before coming outside, and when they were kissing the late-autumn cold disappeared. He lit her up like a paper lantern. Rain rolled down the roof in a nighttime drizzle and a burst of Charlie's laughter from inside made her want to jump back, caught, but Mulder only pulled her closer, his hand tickling her hair, hers on his shoulder.

_I've never really had a family_ , he'd said to her moments before. It made her immeasurably sad, and she'd taken his hand, squeezed it.

_You'll always be welcome in mine_ , she'd said. She'd meant he would be welcomed at any holiday, but when it came out she realized it was a far larger statement. The truth rocked her. Now she closed her eyes and opened her mouth to him, and after a long, languid kiss they parted. He seemed unsure of how she'd react, but she was smiling. She took his warm hand in hers and squeezed. That year he'd also come for Christmas, this time Bill and his family had been invited, too. He'd helped Matthew and Tommy, Charlie's older son, build a sad snowman in the front yard with the small amount of snow that had fallen and even Bill was tolerant of his presence.

"Why did you invite him?" he'd asked while Matthew played with Mulder outside. He leaned against the kitchen counter with a glass of wine while his younger sister painted egg yolk over the intricately woven crust of an apple pie.

"I..." Dana looked outside at them and smiled unconsciously, although she felt even emptier as she watched him with her nephews. When she put the brush back into the egg yolks she caught her brother's eye and blushed. "Because he's family, too."

Something shifted behind her brother's eyes. Overall, after all that had happened, all he wanted for her was safety and happiness. If the man playing with his son outside offered her that, so be it. Tara had picked up a book for Mulder, one that Dana said he'd mentioned wanting to read, and in the afternoon Bill was the one to hand it to him.

That night Mulder drove them to her apartment and they went inside quietly. It was late, and they were tired from the excitement of the morning's presents, the large afternoon meal, it was like coming home from vacation. Yet they still made love in her bed, in the dark, slowly, deeply. After, she lay with her cheek to his chest and he traced his fingers over her back, where the shadows of falling snow danced from the window. She looked up at him with wet eyes and he put a thumb on her cheek, worry in his eyes.

_I'm sorry I can't give you children_ , she'd said, and he pulled her up further so that she could bury her face in his neck. He shook his head, not letting her hide from him yet.

_Never be sorry for that_ , he whispered, and she heard sadness there. He let her go and she pressed a long kiss to his throat, scratchy, he needed to shave. His large hand stroked her slowly from hip to shoulder and down her arm, and she closed her wet eyes, relaxing.

* * *

Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words stopped abruptly and Dana looked up from stirring her soup and swallowed a spoonful. It was warm and salty, the slightly iron taste from being in a can. The white sky had hinted at it earlier, but now when she looked out her kitchen window she could see snow falling, thick and heavy. It made her smile.

She dreamed a strange dream that night. In it she was seventeen, she was humming (Just Like) Starting Over in her head, and Mulder was there. He was younger, too. The slouchy, boyish man she'd met in that basement all those years ago. He was holding her hand, pulling her from room to room in an old villa, telling her a story of the people who lived there. A woman and her crippled son. Recluses. She clung to each word that fell from his mouth, but they became difficult to interpret, like he was speaking in an aquarium and she was outside of it. His hand felt less solid in her hand, he was slipping away. Suddenly the villa was one of those tiny houses you buy for your fish and nestle in pebbles, a fake home to swim through. He said something and pulled her forward to kiss her, but when she opened her mouth it filled with water, and she began to drown. He watched her, perplexed, as her lungs filled with water and she screamed, clutching her throat, wondering why he wasn't doing a thing to help her.

The phone woke her, and she stumbled into the kitchen to answer it, checking the time on the small alarm clock she'd set on the mantle.

"Hello?" she said, wiping a hand over her face. "Mom?"

A cough. "Dana, it's Walter Skinner."

She raised her eyebrows. "Sir? It's four AM. How can I help you?"

"Yes, I...sorry, I knew you'd want me to call immediately."

She pursed her lips. They hadn't parted on the friendliest of terms. His refusal to let her investigate Mulder's death further hadn't helped matters. _You're looking for something that isn't there!_ he'd said. _It was a suicide, Scully. And it's over._

"It's about Mulder. You should be the first to know." She could hear something behind his words, some strain of...a smile? What kind of sick bastard smiles when he's speaking riddles about her dead partner?

"Yes?" her voice trembled, but she stood up straighter, willing it to steady. "What about him, Sir?"

"Dana, he's back."

The words hit her like a gust of wind, and she clutched the counter, afraid she’d lose her balance, before furrowing her brows. Now there was anger. "I don't know what kind of crank call this is, Sir, but you know as well as I do that Mulder is dead. Dead and buried."

He chuckled, and she hated him for it. "He's not, Dana. It was a top secret, code black undercover job. He was in, well, he'll tell you when he gets there."

She felt tears skating down her cheeks. "Am I dreaming? What the hell is going on?" She felt her world spinning, it hurt, she was going to be sick.

A chuckle again. "You're not dreaming, Dana. He's on his way to your apartment right now."

Suddenly she felt violated, and filled with birds. They were batting their wings, furiously trying to escape and fly into laughter or gut-wrenching sobs, she didn't know which. It was as surreal as the suicide, as real as the suicide. He'd been there on the table, _it had been Mulder_ , and yet it wasn't.

Those bruised, swollen, dark eyes. But deep inside, hidden and petrified, she'd let herself be unsure of the identification, leaving it to Skinner, who'd just admitted to lying. Lying straight to her face. But no, it wasn't real, he wasn't back, she was dreaming. She slammed down the phone and dashed into the kitchen, turning on the water and splashing it, ice cold, onto her face. It dripped down her neck and settled in her collar bones, more pronounced than two years ago.

She was reaching for a kitchen towel to dry her face when she heard the slam of a car door outside, a pause, then footsteps on the front walk. She wiped her face, feeling more nauseous than ever, and closed her eyes as the footsteps stopped at the door to her building. The buzzer by her front door buzzed loudly, a swarm of wasps. Again, again, again. She pressed the button to speak and said, "Go away," although it came out as a broken sob.

The buzzer rang again. Again, again. "GO AWAY," she shouted into the box, leaning back on her door for support. Blissful silence, and then her phone started to ring. She had a new number, how Skinner even had gotten it was beyond her. She wasn't even in the phonebook. She slid down the varnished planks of the door and covered her ears with her hands. It was a nightmare. She squeezed her eyes closed against it as her phone began to ring again. This wasn't real, it wasn't. The cold hard feel of his dead brow against hers that night. Her number on the motel registration. If not him, whose body had they used for the hoax? No, none of it was real. It was a cruel fucking joke.


	2. Chapter 2

Before leaving her apartment he'd told her she couldn't wear black.

"It's not all black," she'd argued. "Look, the belt is red." She fingered the slim belt on her knee length black dress, the one she'd bought specifically for Christmas.

"We're not going to a funeral, Scully," he'd said. Slightly offended, she'd gone back in her room to change, reappearing in a deep auburn A-line skirt and cream blouse, tucked in.

"Better?" she asked, turning around.

His eyes had warmed and brightened. "Let's go," he'd said, already in his coat, holding four of the larger presents she'd wrapped.

The drive to her mother's house was quiet, they had gotten in late from a case the night before and she was conserving her energy for the day ahead of them involving four children under the age of five, as well as her two brothers and both sisters-in-law. It had snowed the night before, just enough to settle on the tops of cars and call people out of bed to shovel their sidewalks. In the city, snow was somewhat of a nuisance, but in the suburbs her nephews, especially Matthew, who lived on the west coast, would be thrilled at the opportunity to play in it. She thought about Emily, her own Christmas miracle, gone too soon. She felt Mulder's eyes on her from the driver's seat.

"Scully?"

She looked at him. "Hmm?"

"Is Bill going to kill me?"

She couldn't help it, she laughed. "Why would he kill you, Mulder?"

He shrugged. "He hates me. You Scullys have dagger eyes."

"He doesn't hate you," she reassured, "that's just how Bill is. Even when my father was alive he always wanted to be in charge of us. Anyway, he doesn't have a reason to hate you."

"I'm sort of sleeping with his sister."

Scully opened her mouth. "Oh, Mulder, tell me you're not going to broadcast that. It would break my mother's heart."

He chuckled. "Surely she doesn't think you've saved yourself for marriage?"

Scully winced. "I don't know, maybe she's holding out hope? I think Bill did." She immediately shot Mulder a warning glare. "Nothing from the peanut gallery, please."

Mulder was grinning broadly as he flicked the turn signal to take the exit. "I didn't say anything. I won't say anything."

Walking up to the doorstep of her mother's house, the sound of squealing children inside and Charlie banging away on the piano, Mulder said, "Don’t worry, I'll make an honest woman out of you, Scully" in a joking voice, and her heart skipped a beat. Seconds later the door swung open and Tommy dashed out, his mother right behind him.

"Aunt Dana! Mulder!" His red hair was sticking up in odd directions and he had a sticky candy cane in his left hand.

"Thomas Scully!" Ginny scolded, waving a quick hello before scooping her five year-old up so his socks wouldn't get wet. "You missed the six AM wake up call," she said wryly as they moved quickly inside, Mulder's odd, jokey marriage proposal shut outside the door.

"Look, Aunt Dana! Santa came!" Tommy exclaimed, jumping up and down in front of them as his mother took the bag of presents from Dana and Maggie swept in to greet them.

"Fox," she said warmly, "so good to see you. What time did your flight get in?"

"Good to see you, too," he said. "About three, because of the weather."

She raised her eyebrows. "Well I hope you both got some sleep because you're in for a traditional Scully Christmas."

"Can't wait," Mulder said, hanging his coat up in the closet and waiting for Scully to hand him hers. As she slipped out of it he saw the blush across her cheeks. _I hope you both got some sleep._

"Aunt Dana! Aunt Dana!" Tommy continued, bouncing in front of her, holding out his sticky hand.

"Santa came!"

Scully handed Mulder her coat and was whisked away by her nephew, leaving Mulder, Ginny, and her mother in the front entryway.

After a thorough exploration of the stockings her nephews and niece had emptied that morning and their presents from Santa, their Aunt Dana seemed to take a backseat to Mulder, whom the boys practically pulled outside with them. Lucy, only two, watched with interest from the front window with her grandmother, and Sophie dozed in a sling across Ginny's chest while the Scully siblings and their wives caught up around the dining room table, the women soon converging together.

"I just can't believe you had a baby four months ago!" Tara whispered. "Three kids, and you look the same as you did when you and Charlie first married!" It was true. Ginny, who had married Scully's brother around the time they both graduated from the National Conservatory and gotten spots in the same orchestra, had always been as lean as a dancer.

"I told you, holding that cello all day gives your thighs a good workout, although it was almost impossible to play towards the end," Ginny joked. "When are you going to have another? My kids need more cousins!"

Tara smiled a secret smile. "We've been trying," she confided. "Bill wants another before Matthew's four."

Dana smirked. "Bill and his schedules."

Tara giggled. "I know. But that doesn't give us much time, and with him away more and more often I just don't know how we'll manage it."

The women shared a laugh.

"I didn't realize you and Mulder were together," Tara said shyly.

Ginny, who had picked up immediately on her sister-in-law's connection with her partner at Thanksgiving, waited for the confirmation she and Charlie currently had a wager on.

Dana struggled to come up with a lie, but they were family. "It's not something we're open about at work," she explained. "Plus, it's rather...new." She blushed as she sipped a glass of eggnog.

Ginny smiled knowingly. She was younger than Dana, but had watched her through the years with other men, and none of them had looked at her like Mulder did. She'd suspected something was happening between them years ago, so the fact that it was new did surprise her a little.

"Well, I'm really happy for you, Dana," Tara said, squeezing her sister-in-law's hand. "It was so hard on you when you came for Christmas, that sweet little girl."

"Mama!" Lucy had toddled into the kitchen, trailed by her grandmother, and was tugging on Ginny's skirt. She raised her arms, wanting to be held.

Ginny nodded to Dana. "Honey, I've got Sophie right now, I can't pick you up."

Lucy held her arms up to her aunt, and settled her head onto Dana's shoulder once Dana had her hitched on her hip. Ginny smiled. "I think someone might be ready for a nap after lunch. Mom, can I help you set the table?"

Maggie shooed her. "No, sweetie, you just relax, I'll put Charlie and Bill on it."

Ginny rolled her eyes at Dana and Tara. "Charlie's favorite thing after putting together Tommy's toys."

"Yeah, don't get me started on 'Some Assembly Required'," Tara laughed.

Dana moved to get a clearer view of Mulder, outside with the boys. He was so tall next to them. Tommy saw her looking out from the window and waved. She smiled and waved back. Mulder looked up from his work packing snow to form a snowman, his cheeks pink from cold, and caught her eye through the glass. Standing there, a baby playing with her hair, they could be in another world. The corners of his mouth tilted up in a smile, and she smiled back, her eyes warm. Lucy drew her attention away. Stroking her aunt's hair, she said, quite clearly, the word 'red'.

"Dana, Mom wants your help with the apple pie or something," Charlie called, and she turned away, walking to the kitchen. She handed Lucy off to her father, running a hand over the child's soft, strawberry blonde hair one last time.

* * *

The Christmas Eve after he'd killed himself, a black day.

A film of snow covered the street, no one was driving down it on Christmas Eve. Dana walked across the street to her car, her footprints marking it in a diagonal line. It was cold out, her fingers were numb unlocking the car. She got in and closed the door harder than she'd meant so that it slammed shut. She imagined if the snow-flecked glass of the window had shattered, shards falling on her lap, along the dashboard. People would wonder, _What is she so angry about? It's Christmas, for_ _Heaven's sake!_ And she would smile and say, _None of your fucking business. Have a Merry fucking_ _Christmas_. She bent over, resting her forehead on the cold steering wheel. The windshield wipers worked at the snow-speckled windshield.

She started the car, pulled out of the spot quickly, sloppily, and drove. She couldn't think of a better way to spend her Christmas Eve than to drive, drive, drive, and forget. Dana almost wished she could buy a bottle of some cheap liquor and hold it between her knees as she drove, take swigs at red lights, get blasted like some high schooler. _Merry Christmas._

She didn't want a Holly Jolly. She didn't want a Very Merry or a Feliz Navidad. It was only eight o'clock and she had the whole night to get through. All over the city families were sitting down to have dinner together, schlogging eggnog, carving turkeys. Kissing relatives' chilly cheeks as they arrived from out of town, laughing, children begging to open just one present. Christmas lights were draped over doorways, along windowsills, tangled up in the trees lining the sidewalks.

She threaded her car through the streets of Washington. When Scully turned on the radio someone was singingabout how they'd be home for Christmas. She changed stations. She didn't want to have herself a Merry little Christmas. She didn't want to deck the halls. She flicked the radio off. There was nowhere she wanted to be after declining her mother's invitation to go with her to Charlie's, instead staying home in bed until four when she decided to get up and clean her already clean apartment, because there was nothing else to do. Nothing to do but drive around until her tank was empty and she had to fill up. She wished she was drunk, really drunk.

She cruised through one of the wealthy neighborhoods, the families strolling along the broad sidewalks, the stores all decorated, windows spray-painted with snow and cartoon Santas, _Merry Christmas_.

She stopped at the Chinese market, the parking lot was jammed, people buying their last-minute fish and sponge cake. She pushed a cart around for awhile, down the long cold rows of vegetables and fruit. She decided to buy a weird huge fruit that looked like a porcupine, it weighed about ten pounds and smelled like armpits. Mulder would do something like that. There was no trace of Holly Jolly in here, God bless the Chinese. Men with huge cleavers hacked up chickens and hunks of pork behind the butcher case without a shred of tinsel or a single Santa hat. Two tiny withered grandmas stood over a metal sink full of little blue crabs scrambling over each other in a hopeless bid for escape. Maybe that was God. Peering over the edge of the sink as you tried to claw your way out, picking off this one and that one.

She carried her purchases out to the car, some of those cakes Mulder liked and the stinking porcupine fruit, and started driving again. She couldn't shake the feeling that any minute she would see him, walking along with his hands in the pockets of his dark jacket. There by the newsstand. Or there, in front of the kindergarten.

The CVS parking lot was still bristling with unsold Christmas trees. They probably would have bought their own tree here. She could see them, walking together, the tall man in the long coat, collar raised against the cold, the small woman in the jeans and turtleneck sweater she wore on weekends, her auburn hair bright against the grey sky. Christmas in his eyes, practicality in hers, saying No to the tallest ones. A day they would never have. Driving home with the tree tied to the roof of his car like a dead deer, carrying it up the steep stairs. They'd sit up late decorating it with the white lights Mulder had bought, the box of generic and personal ornaments Scully had stored above her towels. The sparkly little UFO ornament she was hiding in her drawer for him. Maybe they'd dance once it was over, Mulder wrapped all around her, his cheek pressed into her hair. That didn't seem like them, but it could have been. They _could've_ had that.

She pulled into the parking lot, parked, trying to see through the tears gathering in her eyes that stung like bleach. They had been happy, they had been happy _together_ , if only for a year. She got out and pushed her way between the trees, brushing their sticky needles with her bare hands, the smell overpowering, clinging to her arms. She wanted him desperately, fiercely. She wanted him back, now, right now, she didn't think she could live one more moment.

"Ma'am?" A pimply-faced boy was peering at her through the branches. "Ma'am, are you all right?"

She was exhausted, her nerves stripped like wires, the red and the white. She felt like a saint with the arrows shot through, bleeding to death. "Do I look alright to you?" she said, clutching at pine branches, her hands smelling of pitch pine and loss.

She bought a whole carton of sad Christmas oranges from the boy and brought them to the car, where their smell compounded with the other fruit's and the lingering pine that was smeared all over her. She peeled one on the steering wheel as she drove. The rind was thick, the orange smaller than it should have been, cold and sour, but she ate it anyway, knowing somewhere there was a place where the oranges would be allowed to ripen all the way. They would fall off the trees before they were picked they were so ripe, the smell was only a promise. Juice ran down her chin.

She drove idly through to the suburbs. Christmas lights festooned the houses, in the trees and across balconies, around windows. Little houses with their little families, getting ready for Christmas. Flickering lights at the rooflines, trees in the window. Why couldn't they have been like that, for him? She tried to look into the windows of the houses as she passed. So pretty. So hopeful, that instinct for light in winter, believing, waiting for a miracle. While she was left with just this, a stinking fruit in the backseat, a cold bed. She refused to change the sheets, but they already didn't smell like him anymore.

That was the frightening part about believing in things. You could wake up one day and it could all be gone. And you were just left with bad oranges, climbing crabs, and fake snow, _Merry Christmas_. And yet here were these houses made beautiful by their lights. She knew that the truth was out there somewhere. It had to be. How could Mulder leave all this? How could he drive off like that and kill himself, when the night before he'd been telling her about all the sledding he'd done as a boy, when he'd asked her what her favorite present had been as a child, when he'd told her he loved her in blue...He could have left a note. _Here's my dark world_ , it could say, _you carry it for a change, I'm_ _out._

She'd driven to her mother's house without realizing it. A modest tree twinkled through the living room window, decked with lights and the family ornaments, a wreath on the door as her mother opened it and came outside, her arms wrapped around herself in the cold. Dana looked up when her mother opened the driver's side door.

"Dana?"

Her hands were still on the wheel, sticky from the orange, the car still running. Her mother repeated her name, this time more insistently as a gust of winter wind blew down the street. "Dana, come inside."

She nodded slowly, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and allowed herself to be helped out of the car and up the walkway to the front door, grey mushy snow under her feet in the darkness. _I'll make_ _an honest woman out of you_ , he'd said that day. Inside the house was warm and smelled like the only home she had left. None of the bustle and excitement of last year's Christmas, because this time it had been at Charlie's place. Her mother was still dressed from the day, waiting, no doubt, for midnight mass, but a throw blanket and book rested on the couch, some reading glasses on the little end table.

"Go sit on the sofa, I'll bring you some tea," her mother said gently, and Dana obeyed, taking off her shoes and going to curl up on the comfortable sofa in the living room. She took the blue blanket and wrapped it around herself, closing her eyes and resting her head against the cushion. She was tired, so tired of being tired. Her grief was like a migraine that wouldn't let her rest, but there was also anger there. Anger, and guilt from being angry at him.

Her mother returned with a mug of hot water and a tea bag steeping in it. The mug had a reindeer's face on it and a chip on the rim, and Dana recognized it from her childhood. She took a sip and burned her mouth. The water hadn't had time to grab the herbs, but she held the mug in her hands to warm them. They were always cold these days.

"You know what he said, what Mulder said, last year when we came for Christmas?" she asked softly, remembering.

"What?" Maggie asked, her hand on her daughter's shoulder.

"He said, 'I'll make an honest woman out of you'. Right outside, just before we came in. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. We didn't mention it again." She smiled sadly. "Funny, the things you remember."

"He wasn't joking, Dana," her mother said, her voice soft but steady. Her daughter looked up, not understanding. "He asked me, this Thanksgiving, while you and Ginny were cleaning up in the kitchen. I told him he was being silly, that he didn't need my permission, but he told me he thought he should ask anyway, because you were traditional." She took the mug from Dana's hand as she collapsed into her, deftly setting it aside on the table behind her and clasping her arm around her daughter as she began to cry.

She rocked her for a few moments, until she felt Dana relax and wipe her face off. She took a deep breath. "I would have said yes," she said, surprising herself. "Marriage...it doesn't really seem like us...but if he had asked, I would have said yes, I think." She pulled away from her mother and smiled a little. "I can't believe he asked you."

Maggie chuffed a laugh, wiping a stray tear from her eye. She had to be strong for her daughter. Dana was usually the strong one. "He thought he was doing the right thing. I thought it was...endearing. He said he...he said he was going to ask you on Christmas."

Dana closed her eyes. So that's why he wanted to do Christmas alone, she realized, he didn't want an audience. He might have even thought she’d say No. They'd rarely said _I love you_ , and usually only in the dark, where words are always louder. She couldn't imagine calling him her husband, but she could imagine being a wife. Them being a family. She let herself imagine their family, the children they'd never have. A boy with her hair and his eyes, a girl with dark hair and blue eyes. It seemed that love was a crop, and her season had come and gone.

All she could ask, over and over, was, "Then why did he do it?"

Her mother shook her head.

"I loved him, and he loved me, he wanted a Christmas together, a life together, and then he had to go and kill himself." The words tasted like copper pennies in her mouth. "We were happy. It doesn't make sense."

Maggie squeezed her daughter's hand. Losing her own husband had been difficult, she'd grieved for months, she still missed him every day. She couldn't begin to measure love, but at least she had had time with Bill. They'd had a whole life together, a family, a full life. Her only daughter, who rarely needed others and kept so much inside, had bathed in the sun of new, deep love, and was now being sunburnt from the inside out. And to have it happen like this. She was Juliet without Romeo's dagger.

* * *

Somehow, he'd gotten inside her building. She could hear him coming up the stairs to the second story, the fall of his footstep familiar as a song so old that it scraped her heart like the bottom of a burned pan. The hesitation as he came to the landing, looking between 3 and 4, trying to remember which one was hers. She pressed her hands over her ears so she wouldn't hear him say her name.

Instead she jumped back when he knocked on the door. She felt it like a kick to the gut. Then, "Scully?"

It wasn't real. It wasn't real. Some horrible twisted game, one of those gunpowder secret sources Mulder spoke with who showed them a way to another dead end. It was like Melissa's voice! A sound as real as a heartbeat, only to be made by a machine. Yes, that's what it was.

The coffin had been lowered into the wet, muddy earth on a Saturday. Dana watched it sink, the uncomfortable mechanics of it. She'd chosen black for no particular reason, and it gleamed like the shell of a piano, although her fingerprints had left greasy marks on the side, and now a morning rain pebbled the surface. She stood there like the other bookend to his headstone and thought, _this i_ _sn't what he would have wanted_. How many times had they driven past this quiet, solitary cemetery without a single thought to the people buried here? There lay the dead, but you couldn't read their headstones from the road, and why would you want to, anyway? They were dead and buried, plain and simple. _I'll never forget you here_ , she'd said to herself.

* * *

"Scully, come on, open up," his voice was muffled, like a half-finished thought.

"No," she said, and the word came up like bile. "Go away."

"It's me. It's Mulder. Skinner said he would call." Despite everything her grip on her head loosened. It was like sinning, hearing his voice. A flush spread up her chest. "Look, I know you're angry, but I promise I'll tell you everything. No more lies. No more secrets."

She didn't move. A long silence. A deep breath from him.

"Prove it," she managed. "Prove you're Mulder."

He chuckled, and she pressed her face to one of her drawn up knees, closing her eyes.

"You're damn good at Gin Rummy, you've got this old pack of cards you and Melissa played with and the edge of one is burned, because you smoked a little in med school, even though that's ridiculous and as a doctor I think you should know that. It's the two of hearts. You tried to teach me on a case once in...Utah...yeah, Utah...and you let me win."

Dana's shoulders relaxed. She was carried away by his voice, a paper boat on a gentle lake.

"I broke a bottle of champagne when I was trying to open it. It was New Years. 1999. Your place. The cork hit the kitchen ceiling and I dropped the bottle and it got all over the floor, but to be fair that was cheap champagne, Scully. I got it at Food Lion on the way over. You kept the cork. You put it in a drawer with all the forks and knives and spoons for some reason. We drank apple juice instead. Will you let me in, Scully?"

She shook her head. "More," she said in a quiet voice, calmer now.

He made an exasperated noise with a note of laughter. Her heart soared. "You took piano lessons with Charlie when you guys lived in San Diego because the piano teacher gave your mom a deal and it was one way to keep you two out of trouble for an hour on Wednesdays after school. You can only play one piece and you wouldn't be half bad if your hands were bigger. Now Charlie, he's got big hands. He can stretch an octave."

Dana stood up, pitching forward a little, then caught her balance. She felt like a stick figure with no clothing, no organs, no skin, no soul, bare and vulnerable. She could be erased in an instant. His eyes. Those dark, bruised eyes. Blood in his mouth. His cold, hard face. _A thing_.

She reached forward and unlocked the deadbolt, then put her hand on the smooth doorknob. Thank God he didn't push his way through. She turned the knob and slowly, slowly opened the door. It was as if she'd been standing behind a heavy velvet curtain on a dark stage, waiting, a large audience on the other side anticipating a performance, the temperature change as the curtain slowly parted, the rush of cool air. But this was her play, and she tried to breathe, her heart rattling in her chest like a bird in a metal cage, desperate for escape. The first line wasn't hers.

"Did anybody miss me?"


	3. Chapter 3

How many times had she imagined this? Going to his apartment with her mother to pack it up, convinced that she'd unlock the door and open it to find him sitting on the couch with a book, or twirling his basketball on his index finger, waiting for her. More than once she'd pulled up to get gas and put the car in park, waiting for him to open the passenger door and get out to pump, only to realize he wasn't sitting beside her. This time she'd opened the door and there he was. Tall, thin, the bones in his face sharper than she remembered, clothes hanging loosely on him -dark jeans and a dark grey t-shirt, an unfamiliar jacket that made him look rugged. His eyes, _his eyes_ , open wide and full of her. The image she'd had in her mind for almost two years, the Mulder who'd left after that morning in the kitchen, well dressed, his body in her arms, he was gone. She just couldn't believe it was him. And yet here he was. She couldn't help herself, her hands flew up to cover her face and she burst into tears.

It was as if the weight of the room changed once he stepped inside it, the shock of his hands on her shoulders, ice cold from being outside. Cold like a corpse.

She flinched away from him and braced one hand on the wall, the other under her breasts as gut- wrenching, fractured sobs poured out of her. It was like trying to breathe on the moon. Her eyes were screwed shut. Through the roar in her head she heard him close the door.

"Scully, I'm sorry," he said.

Her sobs faded away and she raised her eyes to look at him, incredulous. She kept a hand on her chest. "You're sorry?" Rage spiked through her. 

Oh, she knew about rage, knew plenty, but she hadn't known how it could go inside as well as out, could smash things you couldn't even see, you carried the pieces around forever, and then they worked their way out through your skin years later like shrapnel. When she'd first started to feel it, hours after seeing his dead body, the smell of meat, she thought, _Oh, God, is this how I'm going to feel for the rest of my life? Pieces of this disaster coming to the surface, coming through me from the inside out?_

He nodded. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way, they said it was a two day job, in and out, and then-"

"Stop talking," she said, and he shut his mouth.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes, then moved forward slowly. She reached her left hand up, hesitated for a moment, then cupped his cheek. The feel of his skin under her palm...Her other hand came up now, and she let her fingertips read him like braille. The softness of his hair just behind the shell of his ear, the hard bone of his eye socket under his eyebrow, she smoothed her thumb over the confused wrinkle between his eyes, ironing it out. He let her explore his face for a long moment, the lingering smell of formaldehyde and the industrial soap she used after an autopsy on her wrists instead of the perfume she wore in his memory. She searched his eyes with hers, trying to find the man she loved in his irises. Her hands traced his jaw, his neck. His throat rippled under her cool palms as he swallowed. Finally, she took her hands away, then pressed her cheek against the smooth fabric covering his chest, breathing him in. She exhaled long and slow, and when she felt the palm of his hand on her back some of the exhaustion, the fatigue that had set in that dreadful night two years ago, lifted.

The memory of that first night in his bed flickered before her, how he'd undressed her with reverence, amber light melting through the curtains from a streetlamp outside his apartment. The way he'd looked at her body when she laid back, the stroke of his fingertips over the fine bone of her clavicle, the rise and fall of her chest as his palm found her breast, the tickle of his other hand on her ribcage and then the delicate kiss he'd pressed to her sternum. That night she had bared her soul to him, and tonight she was searching to find his.

"I missed you," he said, his breath warm on her scalp. She pulled away from him, even when his palm trailed from her back to her arm, trying to keep her close. There was hurt in her eyes.

"You were dead," she reminded him curtly.

He smiled. "Not anymore."

She shook her head with disbelief. The anger was coming again now, chugging forward like a cargo train. "I had to...arrange your funeral! I called your mother to tell her you were dead, I had to identify your body." She felt like a fool. The nights she'd slept in his shirts, the hollow, scraped out feeling after closing his apartment door for the last time and handing in the key, the way she'd cried when she found out he'd wanted to marry her, it was embarrassing to her now. All a charade to protect him, alive and well, wherever he'd been. Had he seen her? Had he watched her on the Christmas that was supposed to be theirs? Had he been angry when she'd lost the X-Files? "Do you have any idea what that's like?"

He nodded, although his expression was serious, properly chastened. "A little," admitted. "After your abduction...there were things we had to talk about...think about."

She shook her head. "No, it's not the same. You killed yourself! Out of nowhere! Your body was on a _slab_. I didn't have to think about a funeral, about a headstone, I didn't have a choice!"

He was quiet. Evidently this reunion of his wasn't going as he'd planned. What, had he thought she'd jump into his arms, cover him with kisses, weep with love? Is that what he'd thought, wherever he'd been? She'd never been dead for him, not one moment in two years. She'd been at home, waiting. Whereas for her he'd been cold and dead, buried because she couldn't bear the idea of burning him to ash, his clothes on racks at Goodwill, his apartment meticulously packed and cleaned. How she'd wept when she saw the dark blood in her underwear. It seemed mortifying now.

His coffin lowered into the ground, the priest saying “Who can know God's intentions? Who can know His mind?” One big fucking question. But at the end of the day, who needed a God who'd let Mulder get so lost that he'd do something like that? What was the point of a Devil if there was a God like that? Maybe there was just the Devil, the real God of this damn world. Or maybe there was nothing at all. And everybody was sitting around praying to a great big Nothing, like people praying to airplanes, thinking they were gods.

"If you'd just let me explain," he tried, but was fixed with her icy glare. "I love you," he insisted.

"No, you don't!" she blurted, then covered her mouth like the words were a contagion. Mulder looked at her, clearly wounded. She moved her hand to her chest, pressing hard as she tried to control what words came out and which ones stayed inside, but she wasn't very successful. She wanted him to hurt. "If you loved me you would have contacted me, you would have let me know, you wouldn't have kept me in the dark!"

"Scully, it was impossible to get in contact with you!" he said, his hands splayed out as he tried to get a word in. "It was a code black operation that went completely wrong! Will you listen to me -"

"I thought I was pregnant."

He froze. "What?"

"For a few weeks. I don't know, maybe it was wishful thinking," she said dismissively, "or maybe I was, and I miscarried instead of getting my period." She watched the expression on his face. "How would you have felt, Mulder, if you'd come back and I'd had a child? How do you think that would feel?"

"Scully, I..." She noted, with satisfaction, that his eyes shone with tears.

She looked at the clock again. It was almost five. She couldn't do it anymore. "I need some time to think."

He nodded. "Okay."

She bit her lip, which trembled with adrenaline. "You can stay on the couch."

* * *

In her bed Dana stared at the curtains, listening to the hiss of the radiator. Maybe if she slept for an hour she'd wake up from this nightmare.

She remembered the stakeout they'd done the day after her birthday, sitting in the back of that mock- catering truck with four other agents, wearing kevlar vests, watching the strategically placed cameras around their target location. Waiting for hours, passing around M&Ms, the guys talking sports. Then it had all gone to hell. How Mulder had put a hand on her chest as she climbed out of the truck behind him.

"You stay back," he'd said, "I don't want you to get hurt. We've got it."

That made her angry, and she'd pushed in front of him, running ahead. She'd been rash that night, and gotten a bullet in her kevlar for it. The car ride back from the hospital where she'd been treated for a bruised rib was as tense as an archer's bow. His iron grip on the steering wheel, his eyes strictly on the road.

"Don't ever do that again," she'd said once he'd helped her up the stairs to her apartment. She stood and let him help her undress. "Don't tell me to stay back. I'm just as capable of an agent as you are."

"I love you," he said as if love excused everything, concentrating on unhooking her bra, then handing her a silk pajama top to put on. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"You love me too much," she said softly, looking down to button her shirt.

He scoffed, walking out to the living room. "How can I love you too much?" he asked angrily, loudly.

She winced in pain as she pulled the pajama bottoms up, then followed him out. He looked up when he saw her. "How can two people have a healthy relationship when one of them wants to be loved _less_?"

Scully shook her head, a hand on her injured rib. "I didn't say that. I'm saying sometimes it clouds your judgement. You're always trying to protect me and keep me out of danger."

He looked at her angrily. "We're partners -we're supposed to protect each other."

"We're supposed to work together, and have each other's back. If all you're doing is trying to protect me, you're not doing your job." She spoke to him calmly. "You can't protect me from everything, Mulder. It wasn't like this before..."

"Before we started sleeping together, you mean?" he'd asked, then laughed bitterly. "That's a cop-out, Scully, and you know it."

"Well, you can't deny things have changed since then!" she countered. "I don't know, maybe it would be easier if we didn't work together," she thought out loud.

"Is that what you want?" he asked, incredulous.

"No," she admitted in defeat, "of course not."

It was a memory that had played out behind her eyelids the first time she tried to sleep after identifying his body, after she'd demanded that Skinner take her back to Mulder's place, when she'd cocooned herself in his sheets and tried to make it all go away.

_How can I love you too much?_

She wished she could crumple that night into a ball and throw it in the trash. _How could I have ever_ _said that to him?_ She'd rather take that bullet in her chest than make him think he somehow needed to love her less. In fact, she'd like to be with him now. The room had smelled vaguely of incense. If this was India and there was a sandalwood pyre, she would have thrown herself on it. And she would become a firebird, and she could be with Mulder. The thought crossed her mind that she didn't have her Sig with her, but she banished those thoughts as quickly as they'd crept up in her. No, he wouldn't want that. Even from the other side. He loved her so much.

And her birthday, the day before. A Sunday, they'd gotten up late at her place and he'd told her to go ahead, take a shower, he'd take care of breakfast. Fifteen minutes later she was apologizing profusely to her landlord in the hallway wearing nothing but her robe, conditioner still in her hair, as he tried to disable to smoke detector, while Mulder opened all the windows and tried to fan smoke out of her apartment from his ill-fated attempt at making pancakes.

It was thirty degrees outside, and the cold morning had rushed in the moment Mulder opened her windows. After speaking with the landlord and promising it wouldn't happen again, Scully shut the door, coughed, and picked up a magazine, helping Mulder fan the smoke out. They worked for a good five minutes before he saw her dark lips and chattering teeth.

"I know a way to get warm," he said, waggling his eyebrows at her. She laughed.

"Me, too. Let's take a shower, then get out of here."

They walked to the little Jewish bakery on Vermont Avenue and ate their pastries, drank coffee, and exchanged sections of the newspaper at the little two-top above one of the floor's heating vents. A couple out to breakfast on a Sunday. Dressed casually, no one would guess they were F.B.I agents, his gloved hand resting on her hip over her wool coat on the way back to her apartment, her left arm wrapped around him. The shy way she'd done it.

They went to the Kennedy Center to hear Charlie and Ginny play. The National Symphony Orchestra was doing Tchaikovsky's _Swan Lake_ with the Kirov. The orchestra was just a warm glow in the pit in front of the stage, she couldn't see her brother or sister-in-law. Mulder had gotten center balcony seats, and they watched as a flock of swans fluttered onto the stage, the uniformity the graceful dancers managed to maintain even during the most complicated combinations. When Odette appeared onstage and danced with her prince a soaring violin and cello duet rose from the orchestra, and Mulder tapped Scully's hand and leaned over. His breath tickled her neck as he whispered in her ear, "That's Ginny? The cello?" Scully nodded, and when started to move his hand away she turned her palm up and kept it there.

Even in her long sleeved navy blue dress Scully shivered during the finale, leaning forward to see first Odette, then her prince throw themselves to their deaths. She kept Mulder's hand in her lap as the remaining swans swarmed around the sorcerer, the music blooming into the well known, terrifying melody. A little girl had come with her parents to see the ballet, and she sat near the end of their row. The music rose, growing louder, more frightening, and Scully saw the girl perch her hands up by her ears, cupped the way children do when they watch fireworks.

The end finally came, the dancers frozen in their final poses, you could see the sweat of two hours on the swans' collar bones and arms. Applause rose from the audience, from the entire room before the curtain had fully closed; a round, glorious sound. Then came the encores for the ballet, one, two, three. Then applause for the orchestra. The pit lit up and the musicians stood. Mulder glanced at her, took his hand away, then wolf-whistled down at the orchestra. When he looked back she was gaping at him.

The audience members were gathering their things, all dressed nicely for the occasion, dressed nicely to sit in the dark. Young dancers bounced up and down with their programs in hand, waiting to try and catch the professionals before they left the theatre. As Scully was slouching into her grey coat she heard the orchestra begin to play a quiet rendition of 'Happy Birthday'. She froze, looking at Mulder.

"You didn't," she said, then smiled as he raised his hands in surrender, shaking his head. She laughed.

Then, the theatre half empty, a voice from the orchestra. "Uh, our pianist's sister is the audience tonight and it's her birthday, so let's all wish her a happy birthday." The audience looked around, confused, and Scully looked desperately at Mulder, her cheeks flaming, the curse of a redhead. He pointed at her and the other audience members in the balcony with them laughed when she tried to hide her face in his coat.

"Happy Birthday, Dana!" Charlie's voice came through the speaker.

The remaining stragglers sung another Happy Birthday for her as the orchestra played along, ending with a big piano flourish and the clash of cymbals. The little girl in their row giggled.

* * *

"I'm going to kill you!" Scully said, seeing Charlie smirking when they went backstage to see him. She knew a fair few of the other orchestra members either by reputation or from one of Charlie and Ginny's parties. Some smiled at her as they passed.

He grinned and pinched her side, making her twist and laugh. "Anyway, it was Mulder's idea," he said.

"No, it wasn't!" Ginny interrupted, still holding the bow to her cello. She raised her eyebrow at her sister-in-law. "You know your brother."

Relieved that it wasn't one of Mulder's schemes, Scully moved forward and rubbed her brother's hair so that it stood up in odd angles. He tried to return the gesture but she retreated beside Mulder.

"Did you enjoy it?" Ginny asked as several swans walked by behind her, chattering breathlessly in Russian.

Mulder nodded. "Yeah, we heard your solo," he said, "it was great."

She smiled proudly, then looked at them both. "Oh! Wait, we've got something for you, Dana. Let me run and get it."

They made small talk with Charlie, asking after the kids. When Ginny returned she was sans bow and carrying a small package, wrapped in brown paper with twine to tie it off, a small card tucked inside. "The kids made the card," she explained. They moved out of the way of more swans and Scully opened the card.

"To DANAA," it read, "Hapy Birthdaa!" There were three small thumbprints with little faces drawn on. Scully chuckled, then opened her present.

Inside was a photograph, the frame made from birchwood. A photo of her and Mulder. It was from Christmas, Scully recognized the deep auburn skirt she'd worn that day. They were in her mother's kitchen with dirty dinner plates stacked around them. Scully wore a blue apron and had the sleeves of her cream-colored blouse pulled up and bunched at her elbows. She was holding a plate and her hands and arms were coated with suds. And Mulder was standing at the kitchen island, his own sleeves rolled up, concentrating on getting a spoon to perch off his nose.

She remembered the moment she had turned around from washing the dishes, ready for him to hand her another stack of plates, and how she'd laughed at him standing there, trying to copy what Tommy had showed him earlier at the table. The photo, however, captured her expression just before she'd started laughing. A soft, candid, adoring look she'd never seen herself make before. Her eyes weren't filled with sparkles, she didn't look like a blushing schoolgirl. She looked like a woman who loved the man before her. In the photo they could have been lovers for years, not months. Scully looked at the image quietly, feeling slightly exposed. She hadn't remembered Ginny there with a camera, but she must have been.

"Thank you," she said, holding the picture frame to her chest as she leaned in to give Ginny a hug, then her brother.

It was late before they made it outside, and she tipped her head up to look at the night sky, glittering with stars in the owl-light. His car was parked on the other side of the front parking lot, and they went to it quietly, hand in hand, the picture frame tucked in her purse. Mulder followed her to the passenger side door and turned her around before she could open it, pressed close to her, his hand on the back of her head, she could feel every hair follicle in her scalp. She inhaled sharply, then met his eyes, the pupils wide from darkness or desire, but she knew which. Her breath was like blue-grey smoke between them when she exhaled. Goosebumps ran down her neck as his other hand snuck through her coat collar.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, his voice lower than usual. With his warm body against hers, pinning her to the side of the car, his hand in her hair and on her neck. She nodded, swallowing. She didn't know why it was so erotic, there in the darkness, bundled up in layers of clothing.

"You don't have to ask," she whispered, and he smirked a little, then bent to kiss her. He'd never kissed her in public, and never like this, she thought as she opened her mouth and closed her eyes, feeling them roll back behind her lids. She pulled him closer by his lapels, feeling his tongue reach for hers at the same time. Butterflies in her stomach, fluttering around in frustration because the only nectar for miles was in her mouth, in Mulder's. One kiss melted into another, and she felt her right leg slide up, trying to wrap around his, this was insanity. One of his hands moved down her body, squeezing her waist gently, and she whimpered against his lips. A car door, far off, opened and closed, and he moved away from her. She leaned her head back on the roof and looked at him, breathing heavily.

"Let's go home, birthday girl," he'd said, his voice still low, slightly playful.

* * *

After two hours in her bed during which nothing was accomplished, Dana slid out and got dressed, jeans and a slouchy turquoise sweater he'd never seen her in. Her bathroom mirror revealed a Dana Scully he'd never seen, either. Almost as skinny as she'd been during her cancer, her hair hung at her shoulders, wavy because she couldn't be bothered to blow dry it straight these days. Should she make herself up to look more like the version of her he remembered? Should she try and find that tube of dark coral lipstick she'd worn that night on her birthday? Would he recognize it? _Can I kiss_ _you?_ She brushed her teeth and pulled her hair up into a French twist, tinted lip balm. There wasn't really anything she could do about the lavender crescent moons under her eyes, he probably had them, too.

She opened the door to her bedroom and went into the living room that bled into an open kitchen. A quick glance at the couch confirmed that he hadn't been sleeping, either. A pile of medical journals lay beside him and he currently held one in his hand, brow furrowed at all the complicated medical jargon.

"Hey," he said softly.

She nodded a little in response, moving toward the kitchen. "I'm making coffee," she announced.

He set down the journal and rubbed his hands together. "Good, 'cause I haven't slept since yesterday."

Residual anger from earlier that morning took a back seat to temporary concern. "Why didn't you sleep on the couch?"

He shrugged. "Too tired to sleep. Besides, I was hoping you wouldn't spend all day in there."

She sighed. "No, I just needed to think for awhile," she said, reaching into a cabinet for the coffee grounds. He filled up the coffee pot without being asked. Just like before. She went about preparing the coffee, getting out the box of sugar cubes for herself and some milk for him, because she didn't have any cream.

"You never took sugar in your coffee before," he remarked.

She took out two mugs. "Well, I do now."

She wasn't hungry, but she took a yogurt out of the fridge all the same and put two slices of bread in the toaster. The coffee maker gurgled and spit as it began to brew. She leaned against the kitchen counter and watched the dark drops fall into the bottom of the glass pot. Mulder was looking at her.

She took a deep breath.

He stood up straighter. "Are you going to let me explain now?" he asked.

She looked up as he walked across to her, cupping her cheek in his palm. "Come on, Scully, don't shut me out."

She closed her eyes for a moment and leaned into his touch, then opened them. "I'm trying to let you in."

Mulder brought his other hand up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. He smoothed a thumb over her cheek. "Can I kiss you?"

She looked up, then down, away. Very quietly, the word almost lost in the room, she said, "No".


	4. Chapter 4

It was as if time was passing in slow motion in front of her. The milk he'd poured into his mug of coffee blossomed like a rose on its dark surface, he took a sip without stirring it. She'd always marveled at the way he could live his life without order like that. Most people would stir the coffee first to fully mix the cream, but he knew it would mix well enough when he took the first sip. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the taste, trying to inhale the caffeine. The toast popped up but she didn't move to get it, just sat down at the table in the middle of her kitchen and looked at her dark coffee while he leaned against the counter.

"Skinner told me it would be two days," he began, and suddenly she thought, _No, I don't care, I_ _don't want to know_. She didn't owe him anything, she could throw him out if she wanted. He stopped talking, waiting for her to look at him.

"I'm listening," she said. "Go on."

"To help some DEA and Homeland Security agents in Juárez. A new drug was circulating around, from a new dealer, but even the DEA agents weren't sure what it was, what it did." He took another sip of coffee. "They'd read the report we wrote after Texas about the black oil. They thought maybe one of us could identify it."

"And you volunteered?" she asked, finally looking at him. "Why didn't Skinner ask me?"

He fingered the rim of his mug, looking uncomfortable. "He thought you'd stand out too much."

She cocked an eyebrow. "You mean he didn't want a female agent."

Mulder nodded. "And with all that the violence directed at women in Juárez, the rate of missing persons...I didn't argue." She was quiet. "I know you're just as capable of an agent, and I know you didn't want me to protect you, but I did it anyway."

He seemed to be waiting for backlash, but she sat there, waiting for the rest of it, the coffee pot on the table beside her like a witness.

And so he told her. How he'd flown to Texas that December afternoon on a private jet with a few other agents, met with the DEA and Homeland Security agents, gone over it all with some of the Juárez police department. It would be an easy job for him. Cross the border with the other agents in an unmarked van, stake out the drug scene that evening, meet with one of their contacts in the city who worked as a double agent in the drug cartel. Come back across early in the morning, Mulder would try to identify the drug samples, there would be a short debriefing, and he could be on his way home to her.

He told her how they'd driven through to Mexico, scoped the city out, the job almost finished.

Driving back towards Texas in the early hours of Sunday morning. Two SUVs following them on the highway, coming at a high speed, one racing up beside them, bullets peppering the side of the van where he'd been sitting. Blood on the windshield as the driver was shot through the face, the passenger taking over with one bullet in his shoulder, how they'd been run off the road.

The agent in charge of the operation opened the back of the van, went out to negotiate. When he said they were with the police in El Paso, the men shot at him point blank. The two SUVs carried men who knew the law, knew the other side. They knew a plainclothed agent when they saw one.

Mulder told her how one of the remaining DEA agents had managed to get to the front of the van, how they had pulled the dead body out of the driver's seat. The sound of a dozen bullets hitting kevlar, then the unmistakable sound of a head exploding behind him.

"It happened in seconds."

They'd managed to drive back with a broken, brain-sprayed windshield and two dead men in the back, but the men from the drug cartel had made them out. Cover broken. Mulder's hands wet and sticky with warm blood as he tried to apply pressure to an agent's wound the whole way back as the man faded away, lips white.

"When we got back I threw up so many times I couldn't see straight," he said.

It was easier for the three remaining agents and Mulder to be dead than alive and out there. At the safehouse in El Paso they underwent therapy for PTSD, the Juárez city police and the DEA trying to identify their attackers. It had taken time, over five months, and then to locate the men, all ten of them, and safely arrest them, the manpower that had taken in addition to the growing tension between two cartels.

Two years. Two years spent in relative isolation with nothing to do but wait to be safe on the outside. They'd watched TV, played ping pong and cards. Hackers in Mexico were onto the DEA by now, using internet was too risky. They had a secure phone line solely reserved for contacting the task force. The task force who'd called Skinner on December eighteenth and told him to fake a death. Where they'd gotten the dead man, just mangled enough to resemble Mulder, he didn't know.

 _MULDER! GODDAMN IT, MULDER!_ she'd screamed into a dead stranger's face.

Her eyes itched, but she refused to cry, she didn't think she could take more tears after this night and day of resurrection. "How much contact did you have with Skinner?"

He shook his head. "None. Information I wanted shared had to get cleared with their task force. If it wasn't considered urgent, they probably didn't pass it on. They told me I was dead in Virginia, but didn't explain how they'd made me die. I read about the X-Files in the paper in February that year."

When she'd lost them. _Lost them_. Did he think she was a failure, that she'd given up too easily, not fought hard enough to keep them? The truth was that the F.B.I didn't care, had never cared about the X-Files. They'd kept Fox Mulder out of their hair long enough, and they weren't going to keep the X-Files open just so that the pretty little pathologist they'd assigned as his partner six years ago could spend time uselessly searching for him.

The iron vise she'd kept on her heart for so long loosened slightly. So, Mulder hadn’t killed himself. They had. It wasn't unheard of for an agent to lose their partner, and to grieve for them. His death had been quick and easy to those in control of it. An F.B.I partner but no wife, no children, no real overall importance in the Bureau. They'd made him kill himself, then wiped their hands clean. She was furious. He should have at least been told how he'd died.

She wanted to ask him if he'd thought of her every night. She wanted to ask him if he still loved her after all this time. Had he mourned at the thought of not being able to see her, to hear her voice for an indeterminate amount of time? And was there a ring, a ring meant for their Christmas that never was, hidden somewhere?

"Pedro, this guy who worked in El Paso before, when we got out he found out his wife had moved away to New Mexico with their three kids and started seeing someone else. And Luke, his house was destroyed in a hurricane, so he got out with nowhere to live."

She'd moved away, packed up both their apartments. He had no place to live, either. So, she'd done the same to him.

"I'm sorry," fell awkwardly from her mouth. He looked at her, confused. "I...gave your things away...your clothes...your fish...I left."

He shook his head, putting his coffee on the counter and moving as if to comfort her. Seeming to remember her No from earlier, he checked himself. "Scully, _I'm_ the lucky guy here," he insisted. "I get to see you. And my couch," he joked as an afterthought.

"But your apartment, your job," _Oh, God_. "Mulder, your mother..."

He nodded. "I know, Skinner told me when I got back yesterday."

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

He paused, contemplative, then looked at her. "I just don't know how you did it, Scully."

"We do what we have to." Bitter words she'd said more than once when someone said _I just don't_ _know how you're doing it_ , as if they knew. As if they had any idea. She'd bitten off Ginny's head for the same remark, and felt terrible afterward. The clothes were the hardest to let go of, she'd discovered. If she wore one of his shirts she could pretend the sleeves were his arms, holding her, enveloping her.

What would he have done, had it been her in the ground? Her cancer had brought them close to the shadow world of Death. How would he have picked up the pieces? Mulder had loved her so much. He would have sacrificed himself to save her. He would have taken a bullet for her without question if he'd known she would be safe. Did that make him a coward? He would rather die than see her harmed in any way, but if he was dead he would be spared from grieving. _You love me too much._

"What are you going to do now?" she asked, standing up to go put her coffee mug in the sink. What was she going to do now? Just let him go again, wherever he wanted? Would she follow him?

"Skinner says I could work in the Behavioral Science Unit for a while to get back into the swing of things," he said, putting his mug in the sink with hers.

"Are you going to take him up on it?" She worried about him profiling again so soon, although he was probably itching to do anything at all, from the sound of the offerings in the safe house.

He shrugged. "I have a meeting with him tomorrow. We'll discuss it."

"What about the X-Files? Do you think they'll open them again?"

He shrugged again. "Who knows. They put me on the X-Files to get rid of me. First I have to convince them to take me back."

If he had a meeting with Skinner in Washington, was he coming back to her afterward? If he got the job he'd be living near Washington, hours from Richmond. She had a very real fear, in that moment, that she was losing him again. If he walked out her door now she wasn't fully convinced he wouldn't fade into thin air. What at four this morning had seemed like a nightmare was now turning into a dream come true, and she didn't want to wake up.

 _Make him stay_ , she told herself. _Don't let him leave._ He had no idea how hard it had been, she wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy. Your fragile soul ripped apart like tissue paper day after day. Odette could jump to her death but you couldn't. No, you spent your days in a swarm of swans and raging Tchaikovsky music, and the curtain never went down.

* * *

Early March, her bedroom empty save the mattress, she lay on her back, her fingers between her legs, trying to pretend they were his...

...Sirens wailed outside, growing fainter, zigzagging, she felt the blue and red lights flicker over her face for an instant. Mulder went to the window and tugged the café au lait curtains closed. Amber light dripped inside from the streetlamp like honey. She'd already taken her coat off in the living room, thrown it over one end of his couch. The mist of rain they'd walked through to come inside still clung to her hair, microscopic dewy droplets. The frantic energy between them on his couch moments earlier was gone. She was surprised he'd even decided to take her into the bedroom, considering she'd already managed to undo his tie and unbutton his shirt halfway. It could have worked in the living room, they could've done it on the couch. The mood shifted significantly when she stepped into his room, the awkwardness of having sex with a new partner, the way he'd moved away from her to go fix the curtain. She had her fingers perched on the buttons of her own blouse, pale blue but greenish in the light. If she'd known it would happen tonight she might have worn something different, but it had been a regular work day. A Friday with a 'do you want to come over after work' attached.

Mulder was unbuttoning his own shirt as he walked back from the window, revealing a white t-shirt underneath. _Why did this feel so strange?_ He'd had his tongue in her mouth two minutes ago on that couch and now her wrists didn't feel connected to her arms as she pulled the rest of her shirt out of the waistband of her skirt and started on the buttons. He chuckled and came back to her, stilling her hands.

"Let me do it," he said, and she nodded, slowly letting her hands fall away, and watched as his fingers nimbly worked the buttons. One cheek glowed, the rest of his face in shadow, but she saw the concentration in his brow. "These are always so small."

"I'm glad you're familiar with women's clothing," she joked quietly as he pushed it from her shoulders, let it fall to the floor, and traced her bared, lightly freckled shoulders with his fingertips.

He smirked and pressed a quick kiss to her cheekbone. She reached her left hand behind her to unzip her skirt at the same time that she leaned up to capture his mouth. He kissed her but pulled back, and she felt his index finger brushing along the edge of her bra. She reached forward to undo his belt and fly in a few deft strokes. He looked up from her breasts, surprised. "Nice move."

She cocked an eyebrow. "I'm familiar with men's clothing."

They shucked off the rest of their clothes, which became two rippled pools on his floor, and she took her bra off without thinking, depriving him of the slow reveal he'd probably wanted, but fear was licking up her spine. She led him to the bed like it was hers and lay back in the mushroom soft sheets. Would this be her side now? What if she'd taken his? God, why was she nervous?

He sat by her hips and she saw herself, willowy and China-white, reflected in his eyes. His fingers on her collar bones, gooseflesh on her chest as warm palms found her breasts. She watched the way his eyes changed, admiring flesh so long guessed at. He pressed a kiss on her heart and sat back. She ran her hand up his arm, over the muscle there.

"What is it?"

He met her eyes and shook his head in disbelief. "You're so beautiful. I can't believe I spent all those years trying to pretend you weren't." He looked at his hands on her body, on her ribcage, her breast. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"You're trembling," he remarked, concerned.

She sat up on her elbows and put her hand to his cheek, drawing his face down to hers. That kiss. Sewn on her body, stitched into her skin as she pulled him down, their bare chests pressed together that first time, how he'd rolled them without making her dizzy, keeping a hand on her back when she lay on him, the other in her hair. The way they kissed now was a contrast to how they'd been earlier, a cousin to the first kiss, on her mother's wraparound porch in the rainy night a few weeks ago. He smiled when they parted, but she leaned down to kiss his throat, by his ear, careful to not leave any marks, almost afraid to look in his eyes in the lion quiet. The hand on her back traveled, mapping the wings of her shoulder blades, tracing the staircase of her spine, the swell of her hip.

He turned them again, and she watched his dark head move down, his lips on her breast, on the pebbled nipple, and she had to close her eyes and look away, dovesong muffled into her own hand. He groaned in response, and it vibrated through his lips, wherever they were now. As the weight of him settled on her more fully she opened her thighs to cradle his body, one hand copying his earlier motions on his back. She felt smooth expanses of skin, trapezius muscles and sinew shifting under her palm as he moved. He was hard and heavy between her legs.

Her eyes flew open, and she felt herself tense slightly, although he didn't seem to notice, still busy with her breasts and neck. Things were about to change profoundly between them. Five years of friendship, the most important friendship of her life. _He might turn out to be a great partner, but_ _whatever you do, don't fall in love with him_...words from a colleague at Quantico after hearing about her new assignment. Friendship. Love. How different were they, really? And why did people insist on making love more profound than friendship? She pushed her pelvis against his to encourage him. It occurred to her that they hadn't spoken for several minutes.

They'd known each other for so long, knew each other so well, she hadn't even felt self conscious about her body when he'd seen her naked, like she had with others, he seemed to know instinctively where she wanted to be touched, how she wanted to be kissed. He pushed himself up on his arms and looked down at her. She pulled a hand up and took his long finger in her mouth, swirled her tongue around it, and watched his eyes widen at the sensation. He bit his lip, and she let him go.

"Scully, do we need anything?" he asked, a bit of desperation in his voice. She wondered if he had unexpired condoms here, although there wasn't any reason why he shouldn't. She shook her head, and her eyes stung. "Scully?" his wet finger on her chin, tipping her face up to look at him, concern in his voice.

She felt like a virgin with him, it was the oddest thing. What is virginity? Is it innocence? Ignorance? Fear? Unripeness? The sound of her name, a name she'd never heard in bed before...that's what it was. She wasn't the same woman, anymore. She wasn't Dana when she was with him, she was Scully, a woman with a gun. Was this the man she would spend the rest of her life making love to? She felt full, filled to bursting. She smiled up at him.

"I love you." It was like a gilded secret in the aureate light. The expression on his face took her breath away. She pulled him down onto her, guiding him, and leaned back as he slid inside. His voice, warm by her ear, "I love you, too."

She smiled, turned to press a kiss to his head, and squeezed his body with her thighs. _Unripeness?_ She was his pear, dragging down the branch with all of her ripeness.

Afterward, they lay together like drowned lovers flung onto a beach. She pulled up the sheet to wrap around them as sweat made her skin shiver. So much for those gleanings from novels, from paintings, as if love were a matter of posing for picturesque dishabille. No, love was like a wild Schiele sketch. You went into it as a tiger encountering another tiger. You went into it like a person jumping off a bridge. She dozed for a moment, inhaling him. Would he fall asleep immediately? She hummed a little in contentment.

"The world is full of magic things," she said sleepily, "patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."

Mulder opened one eye and looked at her.

"Scully, did you just quote Yeats in bed?"

She chuckled softly and pulled the sheet back up so that it covered her shoulders, eyes still closed, pressed a kiss to his chest...

On the mattress she let out a frustrated sob and tore her fingers away from between her thighs, removed her own hand from her cold breast, she couldn't do it, she couldn't pretend to be him. The room smelled like Windex and dust, the movers were coming tomorrow. The curtains were packed and moonlight fell in like a belt across her, she hadn't been able to sleep. She desperately needed the release, but it wouldn't come.

Their first I love yous.

_I love you._

_I love you, too_ , its echo.

There was something so funereal in that word, she'd never noticed it before. _Echo_. The death of a sound that had nowhere to go but come back.

* * *

In the kitchen she moved toward him, pulled by something she couldn't name, and wrapped her arms around him, holding him fiercely. The tears were on the brink of breaking free now, whether she wanted them to or not.

"Please, don't leave me," she begged. It was like the morning he'd left. His arms around her, standing in her kitchen...crushing her to him, she could feel every rib in his chest. Only today he was being careful. He just kept a palm splayed across her back. _Oh, God, what if he really didn't feel the same_ _about her?_ She looked up at him, her throat burning. "Kiss me."

He hitched her up so her mouth was easier to reach and she was standing on tip-toe in her bare feet, almost dangling as he started kissing her. Never before had she experienced a moment so intensely.

Latent grief crashed with overwhelming love inside her and she felt tears rolling down her cheeks as they broke apart for air and she dove immediately back in, wanting to consume him. Although he hadn't seen her in two years, she had never been dead, so while he made sounds of pleasure hers sounded more like sobs, kissing him again and again, everywhere, she couldn't ever get enough.

He pushed her back a little, and her heels found the cold ground again. He recognized her behavior as wild desperation, and ran his hands from her shoulders down her arms and up again, trying to calm her before she started hyperventilating. She came to her senses and started wiping her cheeks, smearing the tears, taking deeper breaths.

"Okay?" he asked after a few moments, and she nodded nervously.

"Yes."

He smiled at her. "I'm not going anywhere," he promised. She exhaled in relief and hugged him again, eyes closed. He held her close. The hum of his lips on her head. "If I'd known you were pregnant I'd never have gone, Scully. Never."

She sniffed. "I wasn't sure. It was like before."

* * *

September, a dark velvet night with stars flung in the sky like white flecks on a black enameled roasting pan, frost on the window. A hand on her back, stroking a bit insistingly. "Scully, wake up." Mulder's voice, gravelly with sleep. "Scully."

She woke and looked up at him, made a sleepy humming sound. She still had one leg over his, her head tucked onto his shoulder. Her head felt fuzzy. He leaned away from her to turn on the lamp on his bedside table.

"Scully, I think you got your period," he said, pulling down the sheet. She furrowed her brows, still half asleep, and sat up, looking down. There was a small amount of blood on the grey sheets, staining them dark, some on his upper thigh where she'd thrown her leg across. It was on the inside of her thighs. But she never bled like this.

A cold sweat passed over her like the sensation right before vomiting. "Mulder, I'm-"

He shrugged. "It's no big deal. They're just sheets."

"No," she said, gripping his arm. "I'm really dizzy." The words felt thick in her mouth, like she'd had novocaine injected in her gums.

He put a hand on her shoulder and slowly lowered her back down to the bed, leaning over her, another hand on her brow, feeling for fever. She closed her eyes. There was a dull ache in her lower back. "Better?"

Scully took several deep breaths, then opened her eyes. "Better, yeah. Bathroom." She sat up slowly, then went to the bathroom and closed the door, sat on the toilet. She brushed hair out of her eyes and waited, closing her eyes as more tissue dripped out. As she woke up fully she took toilet paper to the inside of her thighs, shocked by the amount of blood, the clots. It was never like this.

After several minutes the doctor inside her woke up as well. She realized there was really nothing to do but wait. Her eyes fell to the cabinet under the sink. She didn't have what she needed here.

"Scully? You okay?" Mulder's voice, tinged with worry, from the other side of the door. She'd been in there for fifteen minutes.

Her eyes went to the door. "I'm fine. Will you change the sheets?"

"Already did," he called.

She wiped again and flushed, watching the bright red and black blood swirl away. She went to the door and opened it. He sat on the edge of the bed, disheveled and sleepy, shirtless, waiting for her in a pair of boxers he'd pulled on. She stood there, tense, wearing one of his large Knicks shirts.

"Mulder, I think I'm having a miscarriage," she said softly.

His eyes widened and he looked at her, swallowed. "Okay," he said, clearly trying to remain calm, although his voice quivered. "Uh, okay, I'll get the car. We'll go to the urgent care center, it's closer." 

She shook her head and went to him, holding his head gently in her hands. He looked up at her, not knowing what to say. Her voice was calm for both of them. "I didn't even know I was pregnant. I don't need to go anywhere."

His eyes didn't leave hers. "Tell me what to do," he said quietly.

"Could you go to the store and get me some Ibuprofen and some maxi pads? Super absorbency, if you can find it." He nodded, pulled her close and hugged her gently, his cheek against the warm swell of her breast. She ran her fingers through his hair slowly. "It's okay," she whispered.

After a moment of silence he swallowed again and nodded, clearly not liking the idea of not being able to take her to a hospital. He let her go. "I've got Ibuprofen here," he said, standing and going to the bathroom. His movements were nervous and rushed -bandaids, floss, and Q-tips falling onto the counter and into the sink. She couldn't stand still here anymore. She followed him to the bathroom, lifted the lid of the toilet and sat down again, taking a deep breath.

"Here you go," he said, and she took the slightly smushed package from his trembling hand, 400 milligram dosage, something left from one of their many trips to the ER. She swallowed one pill dry and closed her eyes, she couldn’t look at him.

"What did you say before? Pads?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Get the maximum absorbency. There's money in my purse."

He shook his head quickly. "Scully, don't worry about it. There's a twenty-four hour Walgreens a few miles away. You gonna be okay?"

Scully nodded again. "I'll be fine."

He left the bathroom and she heard him getting dressed, then going to the kitchen, the sound of the tap. She opened her eyes and ran a head over her clammy forehead. He came back dressed, carrying a glass of water, and handed it to her, putting his wallet in his back pocket. She took a sip and the water moved quickly and coldly down her throat. He leaned down to kiss her forehead tenderly, then smoothed a thumb over her cheekbone.

"I'll be right back."

In bed he lay spooned behind her, one arm wrapped around, his wet face nestled in her neck. The song of an ambulance from outside, orange and red lights dancing like fairies on the ceiling as it passed. Neither spoke for a long time. It had all been so mundane, so calm. The thick pad was uncomfortable, and she lay on a brown towel. Mulder put a hand on her abdomen and circled slowly. "I wasn't too rough, was I? Is that what caused this?"

She thought back to earlier, her breath catching with the force of his thrust into her, then moaning at the deep pressure, wrapping her legs around him to pull him close. Her hand smoothed down his arm to cover his, still worrying over her belly. "No, Mulder. It wasn't anybody's fault. It just wasn't meant to be."

He pressed a gentle kiss to her neck, over the chip, holding it for several seconds.

She closed her eyes.

Once, in college, Scully had gone along with her roommate to her family’s house for Passover. The Seder started late, after the grandchildren had been put to bed, and they -all the guests, even the rogue Catholic- were talking and joking, maybe fifteen of them along the long table, in the sheepishly embarrassed and so overly jocular way of Jews who are reenacting a tradition they are far enough removed from to cause a painful self-consciousness, but not far enough to give up. Suddenly, into the raucous roomful of adults entered a child. They were all so busy with each other that they didn’t notice him at first; he couldn’t have been more than three, dressed in footed pajamas and clutching a sort of cloth, or rag, the shredded remains of a blanket, Scully thought, to his cheek. They had woken him from sleep. And suddenly, bewildered by this sea of strange faces and clamor of voices, he let out a cry. A wail of pure terror that cut through the air, and silenced the room.

For a moment everything froze as the scream hung above them like the question to end all questions that particular night, of all nights, is designed to pose. A question which, because wordless, had no answer, and so must be asked forever. Perhaps it was only a second, but in Scully’s mind that scream went on, and still went on somewhere now, but there, on that night, it ended when the mother stood, knocking over her chair, and in a single fluid motion rushed to the child, gathered him in, and held him aloft. In an instant the child quieted. For a moment he tipped his head back and looked up at his mother, and his expression was illuminated with the wonder and relief of finding, again, the only comfort, the infinite comfort he had in the world. He buried his face in his mother’s neck, in the smell of his mother’s long lustrous hair, and his cries slowly grew dimmer and dimmer as the conversation around the table started up again, until at last he became silent, curled against his mother like a question mark -all that was left of the question that, for the time being, no longer needed to be asked- and fell asleep.

The meal went on, and at some point the mother rose and carried the limp body of the sleeping child back down the hallway to his room. But Scully barely noticed the conversation that swelled around her, so absorbed was she by the expression she’d glimpsed the moment before the boy had buried his face in his mother’s hair, which filled her with awe and also grief, and she knew then, somehow, that she could never be that to anyone, the one who in a single motion could rescue and bring peace. Melissa could, maybe, so sure of her own feelings, of herself. But Scully had been convinced that night that she was far too guarded to ever be that someone.

And so she didn't cry. Tonight was only a confirmation.

* * *

Birdsong from outside, a cool-pink sunrise after seven AM. She looked out the kitchen window, her cheek still on his chest. The snow from the night before clung to the trees in wooly clumps, it glimmered as the weak sun bounced off it. She smiled -tired, happy, warm.

"It's a beautiful day."

He chuffed out a laugh. "Scully, I am so tired."

She tilted her head back to look at him, smiled understandingly at the exhausted expression on his face. She took his hand, large in her small one, and led him to her bedroom, to the slept-in sheets, her pajamas thrown lazily at the end. He went easily, and kicked off his shoes before climbing in. She watched him settle, wanting to join him, but something held her back. The idea of his body, resting still beside her was not a pleasant thought, even if he was warm. When Mulder realized she wasn't coming to sleep he tugged her pajama top from the foot of the bed and held it by his face, already buried in pillows, keeping the smell of her close. She patted his foot, feeling awkward, and went out of the room, closing the door most of the way behind her. The phone rang, and she rushed to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Dana?" Her mother. "I've just had a very strange call from Walter Skinner."

"Mom-"

"He tells me that Fox is alive, that he's there at your apartment, and-"

She tried to calm her mother down. "It's true, he is, don't worry."

"'Don't worry'? A man who was dead for two years is alive again? I don't believe it. You shouldn't be alone with whoever it is, Dana."

Now she could fully appreciate the complexity of the situation, but she understood her mother's concern. "Mom, I'm fine."

"I'm coming down there," her mother snapped. "Don't go anywhere with him." A clink as she hung up the phone.

The hell her poor mother had endured after Fox Mulder's death -her daughter's grief, her own, Dana's move to Richmond, the loss of a man she already considered a son-in-law...If Dana's reaction had been extreme, they were in for a whole other storm.


	5. Chapter 5

Dana went to sit on the couch, pulling her legs up underneath her and wishing it were warmer inside. She thought about picking up and reading the novel she'd been slugging through for two months, but knew she'd stare at the page and think of Mulder. It was like when she'd visited Ginny and Charlie in the hospital after her first nephew had been born. Her sister-in-law had been in labor for eighteen hours before finally giving birth to her baby, and Dana had stopped by the next morning. Ginny couldn't take her eyes off little Thomas, even as exhausted as she was.

"I just can't believe he's finally here," she croaked, smiling, gazing at the tiny baby in her arms, then watching him in Dana's. Charlie was the same. As a twenty-three year old medical student operating on an average of five hours of sleep, she couldn't understand why they weren't using every spare minute to close their eyes.

"You'll understand when you have your own," her mother had said with a teasing smile, squeezing her youngest daughter's hand.

The picture of that day was on the front of Tommy's baby book, full of photographs. Her parents, Ginny's, Melissa, Charlie, Ginny, and a version of herself she tried to recognize, that bookish girl with small shoulders and a full smile, a bright future in front of her.

She wanted to go sneak into her room and lean against the wall, watch Mulder breathe in and out. Part of her wanted to wrap herself around him and never let go. Instead, she thought back to their year together, shuffling through the months like a deck of cards. With all the pain of the past two years still fresh in her mind it was sometimes difficult to remember a purely happy moment to concentrate on without feeling destroyed afterward. But there he was, in the next room. She could let herself be happy here.

* * *

'... _lock all my scaredness down in my stomach until the fear hardens into something I hardly notice. I_ _myself harden into a person that I hardly notice_....' She didn't look up from her book as the apartment door opened and closed quietly.

"Mulder?" she called, "Is that you?"

He came through to her bedroom. She looked at him in surprise. Dressed in jeans, his Quantico sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, the tip of his nose pink with November cold. "Up and at 'em, Scully," he said, sitting down on her bed and resting his hand on her socked foot, which had worked its way out of the blankets.

"What?"

"Book down, G-woman, I'm taking you out on the town," he said, squeezing her foot. She pulled it away and set down her book, confused.

"Mulder, it's..." she looked at her watch, "two on a Sunday. What are you talking about?"

"We're going on a date," he informed her.

She raised her eyebrows. "A date? Mulder, you and I have never gone on a date."

He raised his eyebrows back at her, genuinely surprised. "What? What about your birthday? What about the Knicks game?"

She shrugged. "I guess it doesn't feel like a date with you."

He rolled his eyes. "Labels. Okay, get your coat, we gotta go." He held out his hand and helped pull her out of bed. She shivered without the blankets, even though she was dressed for the season.

"Where are we going?" she asked as he led her to the living room, half of her wanting to stay warm in her bed with her book, the other half pleasantly surprised and curious. "And why are you dressed like a trainee?"

He let her hand go, giving up his act. "Your mom called to invite me for Thanksgiving and said she was going to clean up the lawn this weekend. I told her I'd do it instead."

"That was nice of you," she said.

He shrugged. "Wanna tag along? We can make big piles of leaves and jump in them," he said, making it sound like a sugar bribe, but she wasn't biting.

"Mulder, it's cold," she whined, looking out the window. When she looked back at him she laughed at the expression on his face, like a little lost boy. She stood on her tip-toes and kissed him, a palm on his cheek, still smiling. "Okay, I'll go put on a sweatshirt."

She came back minutes later with her wavy weekend hair in a ponytail and her own Quantico sweatshirt on, slightly faded. He grinned.

"People will ask if we're identical or fraternal," he joked.

It was a beautiful afternoon. The sun had been nipping at the leaves through a warm October and were now falling all along the sidewalks in the city, turning them into yellow brick roads. As he drove them through to the suburbs she watched the larger trees, their leaves the red of dirty pennies, ochre, yellow with brown, singed edges. Evidently, other families had the same activity in mind for their Sunday, and were out raking leaves off their perfectly manicured lawns as they'd been doing all autumn, only for more to fall the next day.

When they arrived at her mother's house she realized Mulder had made the right decision in taking up the job. Her mother would have gotten along fine with the task, but there were branches along the edge and a sea of leaves to get through, she'd waited a month to rake the yard. Scully had thought of asking her mother if she'd like to move closer to her in the city and put the large house on the market, but hesitated each time, not wanting to make her mother sad about the empty armchair in the living room where Ahab used to sit after dinner.

"Looks like we've got our work cut out for us," Mulder remarked.

Scully nodded, already dreading opening the car door. She took her gloves from where they'd landed by her feet and braced herself, getting out of the car and exhaling against the cold. Mulder closed his own door and they walked up to the house together.

They knocked, and after several minutes, Scully looked up at him. "That's weird, she's usually home on the weekend." Her phone was in the car, but she had her keys, and opened the front door, stepping inside. "Mom?"

There wasn't an answer, so she shrugged. "Maybe she's at her book club. I'll get the key to the shed."

It turned out that raking leaves and moving branches out to the curb warmed you up, so that now her only complaint was her numb nose and ears. Mulder raked one side of the yard while she did the other, so they ended with two large piles of leaves, some damp and dirty, like they'd been found on the bottom of a pool. Mulder whistled classic rock and she mouthed some of the words.

"I'll go get some trash bags for the leaves," she said, taking her gloves off and heading for the door.

"Wait!" he called. "We've got to jump in the leaves first!"

She sighed, then wiped her runny nose. "Mulder, I thought you were kidding! I'm not jumping in those!"

He shook his head. "You have to."

She eyed the two piles warily.

"Okay, I won't force you," he chuckled good-naturedly. He went to her pile of leaves and raked it over to join his. "You go get those trash bags."

She nodded, moving forward. As she was walking toward the house, however, he wrapped one arm over her like a belt and swept her off her feet in a curl tackle move, then swung her down so she landed safely in the pile of mostly-dry leaves. She laughed and held her side.

"Nice move, right?" he asked, on his knees leaning over her.

"Ow," she complained, grimacing. "I haven't done that in years."

He was looking down at her, something in his eyes she couldn't quite read. "What?"

"I like your freckles."

She winced. "Oh, I hate them."

He squeezed her waist and she squirmed, managing to escape and run back to the house. He followed her and caught up, sneaking behind her as she reached under the sink to find the trash bags.

She yelped when he picked her up and set her on the island in the middle of the kitchen, but then started laughing against his lips as he began to kiss her.

She scooted closer to the edge of the counter, giving as good as she got, and closed her eyes when he pushed closer. She kept one hand on the counter and one over his shoulder as he drank her in like fine wine, increasingly thirsty. The friction of their jeans was amazing, and she dropped out of a kiss to gasp when he thrust forward, practically fucking her through her clothing. Were they going to do it here? In her mother's house, with the front door open? The thought made her head twirl and she gave a little thrust of her own, holding her hand on his back tighter. Mulder pulled one of her dangling legs up and she locked it around him, her thigh muscles burning.

He swept her up in a kiss again. The heat between them was a contrast to the cool autumn breeze coming in from outside in the next room, the rustle of branches. One of his hands snuck under her sweatshirt and she cried out a bit from the sensation of his cold palm on her breast through the thin material of her bra.

"Mulder, what are you doing?" she gasped as he continued to thrust against her and massage her breast like a horny teenager. That's probably what they looked like, two high schoolers dry humping in the bleachers after a football game.

"Mmm, playing Rummy," he said into her neck, but calmed down a bit. He knew he probably wasn't getting to third base in her mother's kitchen.

"Dana?" a voice coming around the corner from down the stairs. They saw her mother at the same time she saw them. "OH!" she cried, immediately turning around and fleeing into the hallway.

"Oh, my God!" Dana gasped, swatting Mulder's arm out from her sweatshirt and sliding off the counter, her legs like jelly as she followed her mother around to the front entryway, where Maggie was closing the front door. She turned and Dana saw a strange flicker of merriment in her mother's eyes.

"Mom, Mulder and I were just-"

"I think I know exactly what you were doing," Maggie said, opening the coat closet and pretending to rearrange things, not looking at her thirty-five year old daughter.

Dana could feel her cheeks burning. She didn't know what to say. "Mom, I'm -"

"I was just cleaning up the attic, I must not have heard you two come inside," she said with a wave of her hand.

"We cleaned up the yard," Dana said lamely, wiping a hand over her swollen mouth.

"Thank you," Maggie said, then looked up as Mulder came into the entryway. Dana shot a look to his jeans and wondered what sort of horrible things Mulder had been thinking of to get rid of his erection so quickly. "Hi, Fox," her mother greeted him, "thank you for doing the yard work."

"You're welcome," he said, then averted his eyes. Scully noticed there were leaf bits in his hair. Probably in hers, too. "Sorry about..."

Maggie shook her head and walked past him. "Drive back safely," she called, her way of telling them to leave.

They walked out to the car with their tails between their legs and Mulder kept a firm grip on the steering wheel as he drove back to the interstate. Neither of them said anything. Scully looked over at him and took in his face, like he'd just watched her perform an autopsy. She burst out laughing, not bothering to smother her laughter as he looked at her with a miserable expression.

"What?"

She wiped a tear from her eye as her laughter dwindled. "I can't believe my mom walked in on us! That's never happened to me, even in high school."

The corners of his mouth twitched but he still didn't laugh with her. "Yeah, I was practically defiling her Catholic daughter on her kitchen counter, very funny. Or deflowering, if you prefer."

She chuckled. "You know what? I think she was actually happy about it."

"Why do you think THAT?"

Scully shrugged. "I guess all parents want their kids to be happy. Even when they're out of the nest."

He tilted his head in concession. "You did seem to be enjoying yourself."

* * *

She got up from the couch and went to her bedroom, quietly opening the door to her room and looking at him. He hadn't even bothered to get under the covers, had barely moved from the position she'd left him in, and was snoring lightly. She moved quietly to the bed and sat on the edge, watching him, willing him to wake on his own so she wouldn't have to touch his still, solid body.

"Mulder," she said quietly. He didn't move, just crinkled his brow in response to the sound.

"Mulder?"

After a horrible minute he finally roused himself, stretching slightly and taking her in. "Mmm, Scully."

"Skinner called my mother this morning, and she's on her way here," she explained. "Mulder, I don't really know how she's going to react to this."

"She's gonna chew me out, isn't she?" he said, his voice a bit gravelly. She nodded. He propped himself up a bit. "That should be fun." He saw her sitting there awkwardly, hands in her lap, and sighed. "Come 'ere, Scully, I won't bite."

She itched the inside of her wrist nervously. He looked at her, confused. She took a deep breath. "When you're sleeping it reminds me of...seeing that body in the morgue. You know, laying down, not moving. I don't know if I can...," she confessed.

He nodded. "What if we do it like this," he offered, and when she lay on the bed, hesitantly, her head on the pillow, he scooted over so that his head rested in the crook of her neck. It was usually how she lay on him, her cheek against his shoulder, her palm on his chest, a leg sometimes draped over his hip. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of his warm breath on her skin, the steady in and out. Yes, this she could do. If she stayed awake and focussed on him, she could do this. She nodded.

"Okay." She pulled his right arm over her so that she could hold his palm to her heart. "Yes."

She felt him nod, the weight of his head somehow heavier as he immediately fell back to sleep. After two years he was here, in her arms, alive. She stroked her fingers through his hair and got a small noise of contentment from him, so she stroked through again. This could keep her awake. She could do this.

An hour and a half later came the buzz of the intercom, announcing her mother's arrival. The haze of perfect contentment lifted suddenly, and she leaned down to press a kiss to Mulder's brow. "Mulder," she said, a bit urgently, "my mother's here."

He grunted, then opened his eyes, letting her slip out of bed and out the bedroom door. She braced herself, and pressed the button on the little white box by the door. "Yes?"

"Dana, is he still there?"

"Yes, Mom," she said, buzzing the door open. The sound of her mother walking up the stairs. Dana turned around suddenly, satisfied to see Mulder walking out of her bedroom looking significantly less disheveled. She opened the door before the footsteps reached the landing and braced herself, her arms soon full of her mother.

"Oh, thank God," Maggie exhaled, squeezing her daughter.

Dana rubbed her mother's back a little. "It's okay," she comforted, "everything's fine."

Maggie backed out of her daughter’'s arms and gasped when she saw Mulder, lingering at a careful distance away from them. She covered her mouth and looked him up and down. Dana's eyes moved back and forth between Mulder and her mother.

"Fox?" Maggie whispered in disbelief.

He smiled a little. "Hi, Mrs. Scully." His tone suggested pleasure at seeing her, but Dana detected a sliver of fear nestled there as well.

Maggie untied her coat and shucked it off, handing it and her purse to Dana, who hung them up quickly and returned to her spot by her mother. She'd never done it before, but from the look on her face Dana wouldn't have been surprised if her mother gave Mulder a good slap on the cheek for his behavior.

Maggie looked sharply at her daughter. "You haven't slept with him yet, have you?"

"Mom!" Dana gasped.

"From what I remember, you two fall into bed pretty easily," she said.

"No, Mom, I haven't slept with him," Dana spluttered.

"Mrs. Scully," Mulder started, and Dana winced, knowing it was always better to let an angry parent discipline you before saying anything back. Sure enough, Maggie raised her hand to shut him up.

"Don't 'Mrs. Scully' me, Fox," she snapped. "Do you have any idea what it was like for Dana to lose you like that? I had to stay at her apartment to make sure she was sleeping and eating! And whatever she did eat she just vomited up the next morning!" Dana felt heat in her face, mortified at her behavior after finding out he had been alive through it all. "She disappeared the night after your funeral without telling me where she was going and I wouldn't have been surprised if she never came back! You asked me if you could marry my daughter, and then I got a call from her telling me you were dead!"

Mulder's eyes darted to Dana's, and she quickly averted them to the floor.

"I don't know what Mr. Skinner was talking about when he said it was all 'undercover work', but you betrayed us all, and you owe me an explanation!"

"Mom, it wasn't all-"

Her mother looked at her daughter and held up her hand again, anger in her eyes. "You've always defended him to me in the past, Dana, but he owes you this! If this had happened to me, if your father suddenly returned to me, I don't know how easily I'd be able to accept whatever alibi he came up with!"

Dana looked back to Mulder, who also looked properly chastised. "Mom, just let him explain. I didn't believe him until he told me, either."

Maggie exhaled, worn out from her outburst, and looked at her daughter. There was an earnestness, and something in her eyes Maggie hadn't seen in two years. She looked at Mulder again, still wary.

"All right then."

* * *

There it was, the Paradise Motel, with its odd neon green palm tree and yellow pineapple on the sign, looking like something out of Las Vegas, but it was only in Springfield, glowing on the side of the road, the middle of nowhere, no light for miles. So, this is where he'd come to do it. He'd driven to Paradise and picked a forbidden fruit, and here he'd died. Room 14. She flicked the turn signal and drove in, parked neatly right in front of the blue door. The car idled as she took in the slightly wonky 14, the chipped paint, the twisted blinds visible in the window.

Outside in the early evening it was cold; a dry, bitter cold that made her nose run as she went across the parking lot to the front office and walked inside, a little bell announcing her entrance. A blonde girl slouching over a textbook on the desk in front of her looked up and didn't smile.

"You want a room?" she asked, not moving, twiddling a pen in her hand.

"Yes, please," Dana said, opening her handbag and pulling out her wallet.

The girl sat up with an inconvenienced sigh and took out a registration form. "Can I see your ID?"

Dana put her driver's license on the front desk, which was half taken over by the girl's notebook and textbook, two gum wrappers. She filled out the form and slid it back to the girl, who checked her ID with the paperwork, then handed it back. "Just one night?"

Dana nodded and paid. "Could I take room fourteen, please? I parked in front."

The girl checked the wall of keys, which was mostly full. She leaned up and took the little key off its hook, putting it on the desk. "They just got that room redone," she said. "Somebody died in there." She blew a bubble and it snapped against her lips. Dana kept her face neutral.

"Thanks," she said, and took the key. The girl looked back at her textbook. "What are you reading?"

"Hamlet," she said, slouching. "'To be or not to be', all that crap."

Dana nodded, then left, going back across to her car, room 14, his room. She got her things from the car and went to the baby-blue door. A sharp gust of January wind blew through her coat, and she shivered as she took the keys from her coat pocket. She inserted it into the cheap door and opened it. The smell of something sweetly chemical met her before she'd even turned on the light. Not disinfectant, but some kind of dry rot or spray to keep mites from the carpet. She flipped the switch.

A bare lightbulb gazed down on a sad room with blue-shag carpeting, fake knotty pine paneling, twochairs, pressboard furniture. The bed was low, a scratchy bedspread pulled across. She hadn't expected better and yet, she must have hoped. That he had had better, on his last day on Earth. She closed the door and discovered there was no deadbolt or chain, just an insignificant doorknob lock which Charlie could have jimmied in first grade. Honestly, they'd stayed in worse. She sat down on the defeated expanse of the bed, breathing in the poisoned air. This scratchy bedspread, navy and rust in a vaguely western design. This bedside light. These rust-colored ripcord curtains that didn't close all the way, and the stink of ant powder. So much for redecorating. Not a single picture. Nothing to distract him or give him one shred of comfort. This is what he'd found, something ugly, a home for his death. Yes, you'd sit here and think, _There's nothing worth living for_. Here you could convince yourself.

In the bathroom, she pulled the chain and turned on the light. Broken bubbly blue tiles surrounded the mirror. The toilet seat had been repainted but the paint was peeling, rough against her thighs. No ants though. Washing her hands, she looked at herself in the mirror. Hollow-eyed, lips in a line, this is the face his mother had seen at his funeral yesterday. She got her toothbrush and brushed her teeth, washed her face, and dried it on the small rough towel.

Sitting quietly on the bed she listened to the whistle of the wind through the too thin window, the quiet hum of the heater which didn't really work. There hadn't been many cars parked, but in the next room, a man and a woman exchanged listless but antagonistic dialogue over the background noise of a TV. She didn't have one. Lives separated by walls as thin as wanted ads in local newspapers. Life was just like that. Like people in a motel. You checked in, and for a short time, you lived side by side, you heard their voices over a TV broadcast, they heard you weep in your dreams. But you never really knew what went on in the next room. You listened, you made your best guess. But when you saw them outside, you stared at each other blankly, pretending they'd never heard you weep, you'd never heard them cry out. Parallel lines met only at the vanishing point.

She undressed in the cold and pulled on her morbid pajamas -the same leggings she'd worn two weeks ago, washed clean of her vomit, one of the ratty band t-shirts she'd found in the bottom drawer of his dresser, and one of his work shirts. Laying back in the sad motel bed, she stared at the ceiling.

She thought of Mulder in her kitchen in summertime, holding a cantaloupe like a skull on his fingertips. Mock-heroic, tilting his profile like Laurence Olivier. "To be or not to be..." Hamlet's suicide musings. "It's the only question, really," he'd said. "Zero or one. Accept or reject." The expressive gesture of his long fingers.

And she'd laughed. _Laughed_. "The only question? That's rather black and white of you, Mulder."

And so the Zero had sprouted in their garden. Small and secret, it would bloom as this gaping cold absence where he'd torn himself away from the fabric of the world. Zero a red hole in his head. The number that lodged in his brain. He once told her that the Arabs invented zero, because they were a desert people, at home with absence. Now she knew why he'd come here to answer the question, this desert of a room, this graveyard. Her eyes cracked with the emptiness, the dry scoured ache in the pit of her heart. Why hadn't she argued, when he'd said that was the only question?

Her head was throbbing. She shivered. Why had she come here? What had she hoped to find, to glean from laying on his deathbed, not even his deathbed, because they'd redone it all. And had he even fallen to the bed? Had he done it in the bathroom? Had the bullet buried itself in tile, or in one of the thin walls? It had gone clean through the back of his head. Who had found it? His body on that gurney, the iron smell of meat. She hurried off the bed and rushed to the bathroom, crouching in front of the toilet, the floor freezing under her feet as she vomited bile. She'd been throwing up most days of the week. Some mornings, some evenings. She knew she wasn't eating enough.

The amount of food her mother and Ginny had brought to her apartment over the past two weeks would have been impossible to conquer even if Mulder were here to help her. She'd made a lasagna once for a friend whose mother had died. How strange, that humans had to eat to survive, that we prepared food for mourners because nothing else we could ever give would help.

She got up from the bathroom floor, flushed the toilet, and turned on the tap, splashing water into her mouth to rinse it out, then brushed her teeth again. For the second time she looked at herself, the sudden color in her cheeks from the abrupt change in gravity. She palmed one of her breasts, which were sore without a bra to hold them. Maybe she was pregnant. In that singular moment, staring at herself, she wished she wasn't. How could she ever mother his child?

The sheets were cold and itchy, but she tucked into them anyway. She felt foolish for coming here.

She dozed off, waking several times, until she heard a tired car engine start outside. She went for the window, pulling the curtain and blinds back. Dawn tinted the darkness like watered ink. It was time to go home.

* * *

She heard her mother set down her glass of water as Mulder finished his explanation. Dana had busied herself cooking breakfast for Mulder, managing to construct an omelette, two pieces of toast, and some blueberries. Her mother had eaten before driving down, and she herself was too worked up even to sit still at the table with them. She carefully transferred the omelette onto a plate and turned, setting it down in front of Mulder and handing him silverware and a napkin.

"Eat," she said, and he nodded.

"Thank you," he said, putting the napkin in his lap but not digging in just yet. He was waiting for Maggie to finish taking in his story. She had already asked several questions similar to the ones her daughter had asked earlier. Surprising both Mulder and her daughter, some of her questions were much more personal and direct than Dana's had been.

"And do you plan on staying in Dana's life?" she asked unforgivingly. "Do you still care for her?"

Mulder didn't look at Dana, but she snuck a look at him. She hoped she knew his answer.

"Of course I still care for her, Mrs. Scully," he assured her.

The corners of her mother's mouth twitched, and Dana wasn't sure what she would say next.

"Should I set an extra place this Christmas for you, then?"

Dana watched his face change. He looked overwhelmed, almost as if he might cry, but she was the only one who could detect that emotion.

"I'd like that," he said thickly. "Thank you, Mrs. Scully."


	6. Chapter 6

She heard it everywhere, now. She saw it in everything he did.  _ You love me too much. _ She’d  wounded him that night, the night after her birthday. Her apartment door closed behind him not in  anger, but in resignation. The room felt chilled around her, and she sat down carefully on the couch,  a hand on her injured rib.

"... maybe it would be easier if we didn’t work together," she’d said.

"Is that what you want?"

"No, of course not." She’d put a hand to her head as if to steady it and looked at him, hesitating  before speaking, feeling her heart fluttering nervously in her chest. "You don’t think this is moving too  fast, do you?”

His face shifted from the incredulity of earlier to confusion. “What do you mean?”

She’d taken a shaky breath, averted her eyes, then looked to him again, uncertain. “We work  together, we sleep together...We’re in each other’s pockets.”

He hadn’t responded except to nod, then went to pick up his car keys from the coin bowl on the  counter where he’d put them before going to help her undress, help her into pajamas. He’d undressed  her like a friend, like his partner, not like her lover. He’d been tender, mindful of her injuries,  unhooking her bra but not lingering on her breasts like a lover might have. With his keys in hand he  had given her a small smile. “Have a good weekend, Scully," he’d said, then left, shutting the door  quietly behind him.

And now they haunted her everywhere, ghosts of words she hadn’t meant to say. For days he stood  on the other side of a great chasm he'd dug between them. Strictly professional. No jokes, he treated  her with respect and politeness but no lingering attention. She began to notice the tiny nooks their  love had managed to nestle into. The way he’d handed her a file, the way he’d looked at her when  she spoke, the lightest of touches on her arm or back as they’d walked together, how he’d slowed his  gait for her. Oh, God, did  _ everyone  _ know? Did everyone know except her, how he’d looked at her  these past six years?

On their case that week he never knocked at her door after they’d retreated to their rooms for the  night. She waited for him, hoping he’d at least come to ask if she had anything she needed to go  over. Instead she heard the mumble of the television late into the night. The next morning Mulder  drove them to interview one witness. She saw a cloud hanging heavy over the mist filled hills of  Tennessee that looked like a UFO. She knew he saw it, too, but he didn’t crack a joke.

When, on Friday, he drove them back from the airport and dropped her off at her apartment she  asked him if he wanted to come in.

“No, thanks,” he’d said, “I’ll see you Monday, Scully.” Delivered perfectly politely, with no hint of  animosity, no hint that anything was wrong, except it all was. She’d ruined it. So, it had all been too  good to be true. Her birthday, how he’d made love to her only last week, his eyes on her during the ballet, her eyes on him in her mother’s kitchen, immortalized in the frame Ginny had given her.

She spent another weekend alone. He didn’t call her, and she didn’t call him, although she looked at  the phone a fair amount, willing it to ring. What she wanted him to say, she didn’t know. Was it up  to her? What would she say? Perhaps the world was made round so that we could not see too far  down the road and our only option would be to keep on walking forward in pursuit of our future.  Sometimes the road wound around, avoiding obstacles, and sometimes it was blocked off, or forked,  and we had to make a decision that would change the course of our lives forever. She couldn’t know  what he expected her to do. She couldn’t ever know the intricacies of his mind. She could only  guess.

She put in the tape of Charlie playing Chopin’s second sonata, that misunderstood  _ marche funèbre  _ that began heavily, somber, and dripped into fluid melody; he played it like water running through  fingers. She walked the living room into the deep hours of Sunday, then dressed and drove to  Mulder's apartment. Outside in the darkness, Orion hung, wind-scoured and sulking in the face of the accusing moon, like a man being scolded by a woman, as an unblinking planet looked on -Venus, or Mars?

Mulder opened the door and nodded slightly when he saw her, and in that moment she realized he'd  known all along that she would come in her own time. She might be straight-laced and focussed, but  sometimes her soul bucked against the idea of change, like a frightened wild pony in need of gentling.

“Hi,” she said, “can I come in?”

He opened the door wider and she stepped inside, her arms crossed over her coat.

His apartment was warm, and smelled of beeswax and coffee. He was dressed for bed and  looked as if he might have been sleeping, of all things. “I’m sorry it’s so late,” she apologized.

"No problem,” he said, closing the door and coming to stand near her. She’d been mentally rehearsing her  speech for the past hour, but now it was all jumbled in her head and she didn’t know where exactly to start. When she said nothing and didn’t remove her coat he cleared his throat a little.

“Do you want to sit down?”

She shook her head resolutely. “No, no, I don’t. I think it’s better if I-” she looked up at him and  swallowed before plowing ahead. “You’re a very brave person. In everything you do, Mulder. You  go charging into danger and hope nothing goes wrong. You ask difficult questions of others, you  drink coffee without blowing on it first.”

“Some people would call that foolhardiness,” he remarked.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” she said nervously, looking at his chest.

“Sorry.”

She looked back up at him. “You love very bravely, too. You’re not afraid of it. It’s easy for you to  love me.” His eyes softened, and he looked as if he were about to speak, so she continued. “But I’m  cautious. I want to know whatever comes next. I like to be prepared. And so sometimes it scares me,  how bravely you love.”

He didn’t comment yet, but the look on his face made her drop her arms and exhale. “I know I hurt  you last week. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. Sometimes it’s difficult...for me.” She thought of  the loneliness she’d felt during the week, everywhere, on their case, sitting next to him in the car. To  anyone they encountered they were perfectly cordial partners who worked well together and got the  job done. Inside, she’d been pining for him. “This week made me...understand.” She looked up at him, seeming uncertain of his reaction.

He smiled a little and reached forward to open her coat and help her out of it. All at once he was the  Mulder she loved again. There it was, the air in the room changed instantly with his love floating in it  again, mixing with hers to form pheromones. She let him take off her coat and watched, slightly  dazed, as he went to hang it up and ran a hand through his hair. It was as if the past week had never  existed, and everything was back to the way it had been on her birthday.

“Want a beer?” he asked, moving to his kitchen.

She opened her mouth, surprised. “Mulder, I just...I just came here and...poured my heart out to you  and that’s all you can say?”

He stopped, then came back to her, put his hands on her arms. “That’s all I needed, Scully,” he said,  a playful smile on his face. “For you to understand what’s it like to be together and not love each  other.”

“But I do love you!”

He laughed. “I know you do, Scully.”

“Why are you laughing?” she asked, frustrated.

“You’re just so rational, even when you talk about your feelings,” he said, but he took her hand and  ran his thumb across it to assure her he was taking her seriously. “You came up with the equivalent  of scientific equations to illustrate our differences in achieving the same result.”

She furrowed her brows. “I like things to make sense.”

Mulder pulled her close, tucking hair behind her ear. “I know you do. I just don’t know how reliable  they are when it comes to love.”

She shrugged in his arms, it felt so good to be in them again.

“I think you’re very brave, Scully,” he said into her hair. “You know I’m going to quote you  whenever you tell me I’m crazy, or that whatever I’m jumping into is dangerous.”

“I wasn’t giving you free rein to go off and injure yourself, Mulder,” she clarified, leaning back to  look up at him.

“But I’m  _ brave _ , Scully, it’ll be  _ fine,” _ he said, his eyes merry. “Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my  head.”

She clicked her tongue and sighed. “Too late.”

He led her to the bedroom, then waited while she put on the pajamas she kept at his apartment,  brushed her teeth, and came to crawl in beside him.

“Mulder, it’s freezing in here,” she whispered, like she didn’t want to wake a sleeping child.

He chuckled and pulled her close in the darkness, curled around her. “I imagine that’s why they put  us together in the first place.” He put on an authoritative voice. “That Fox Mulder, he lives in an  apartment where the heating breaks every winter, and that Dana Scully always has cold feet, let’s put  them together so they can warm each other up.”

She smiled. “Your logic is questionable.”

“You do always have cold feet, Scully,” he said, and she snuck her bare feet to touch his leg.  He jumped.

“Either you put on a pair of socks or you keep those away from me,” he warned. She laughed quietly  but took her feet away from him and settled more tightly in his arms. It seemed so long since they’d  lain like this, even if it had only been a week. He pressed a kiss behind her ear. “Go to sleep,  Scully.” And she did, warm in his arms.

* * *

She woke on Sunday morning and roused Mulder from where he’d slept on the couch. Still wearing  his clothes from the day before and with nothing else to put on for his meeting with Skinner later that  afternoon, they’d eaten a short, awkward breakfast before she announced she needed to go trade in  the run-down traded Volvo for her own car before they drove to D.C. He’d taken a bus from Dulles  to downtown Richmond and taken a taxi from there to her apartment.

“With what money?”

He shrugged. “I have some money.”

That made her think. All the money he’d left her, none of which she’d yet touched, but which made  her life seem far more secure in numbers only, would surely be going back to him. He’d offered to  take a bus back to D.C for the meeting, but that irrational fear rose again inside her. If he went away,  would he come back again?

“That’s ridiculous, Mulder, I’ll drive you,” she said.

And so by noon they were on the road, although she took the passenger seat. It had been almost two  years since he’d driven a car, which made her wary, but once they were on the road it threw her back  to their days spent in rentals; her holding the map, him stopping to buy sunflower seeds while she  pumped gas, three flat tire changes in six years during which he stood and watched while she  performed automotive surgery and got them back on the road in fifteen minutes.

Mulder turned the radio on, loud enough to hear but soft enough to allow conversation. Dark birds  flew across the windshield like a page of music. She felt his eyes on her for a moment. Today she  probably looked more like the version of her he remembered. A fitted black skirt, a white blouse  tucked in, a trim jacket. Fashion had moved forward in the two years he’d spent away from her, and  given her higher heels and smaller shoulders. She wore her hair longer now, brushed and blown  straight. The lipstick she’d been wearing the night of her birthday, when he’d pressed her up against  the car and kissed her. Her work attire had changed drastically since leaving the F.B.I, and now  whatever she wore to work got folded in a locker in favor of scrubs during the day, but she  stubbornly wanted to show Skinner that leaving the F.B.I hadn’t changed her. The worn down,  exhausted, and fiercely defiant agent he had barked at in his office two years ago hadn’t disappeared.  And, in the end, she’d emerged victorious. Mulder was back. Skinner had known all along that he  hadn’t been dead, but he’d let her believe it. The bastard.

“Have you given any more thought to Skinner’s proposal?” she asked, watching Mulder’s thumbs  tap the steering wheel in time with the music.

He shrugged, then turned the radio down. “I’ll take what I can get. If it’s the B.S.U, that’s where I’ll  have to start.”

“And if he reopens the X-Files?” she prompted.

“I doubt he will,” Mulder admitted. “If he does, I hope nobody’s messed with my projector. At least I  know my poster is safe from defacement.”

She looked out her window. So, he’d seen it. She’d hoped that during his nap the day before he’d  managed to overlook it. Once again she found herself embarrassed, holding onto a dead man’s  possessions like that. She’d had it framed, the only thing she’d taken from their office when she’d  left, but never found a place to hang it that didn’t look ridiculous. It sat, leaning against a wall in her  bedroom, a sad mockery staring at her every night before she went to sleep. In the days following his  suicide she’d wanted to believe, wanted desperately to believe that it had been anyone but him,  anyone but him. But then came the burial, the headstone, the damn lasagnas and quiches, and she  couldn’t deny it anymore. There was nothing left to believe in.

And now he was back.

“And you’d live in Washington, then?”

He shrugged again. “Depends. Only if I can find another apartment with poor heating and ample  room to dribble a basketball.”

His vagueness annoyed her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him the same question her mother  had asked the day before.  _ And do you plan on staying in Dana’s life?  _ She had uprooted herself in  the smallest ways for him for as long as she’d known him. Getting out of bed and onto planes at all  hours after receiving a simple phone call from him, stopping what she was doing to come and see  what he’d found, chasing after him during cases. Did he expect her to pack up and leave her job in  Richmond? If she was honest with herself, she didn’t dislike her post at all. It was probably where  she’d have ended up if the F.B.I hadn’t recruited her when they had.

“Could you practice psychology?” she asked, her voice miraculously void of the desperation she had  locked inside.

He laughed. “If someone read my resumé I think they’d recommend I get help, not offer it. Plus, I’m  not licensed.”

She sighed. During their year together something had come over her that she’d never expected.  She’d always enjoyed working with him, the spontaneity of their cases, the mental table tennis they  played, throwing theories back and forth. During those years the last thing she would have wanted  for them was a settled life lived peaceably in Washington, at the Hoover. During their year together,  however, when rousing herself out of bed at three AM meant detangling her limbs from his and  getting dressed, when they were robbed of quiet weekends together, her attitude had changed. She  didn’t talk about it, and it worried her, but she had found herself beginning to long for safety with  him.

As they neared the outskirts of Washington she saw the airplane exhaust trails that scraped the sky  with their long fingernails, lacing marks through ice blue. A song came over the radio, bringing a  memory back that crashed into her chest like a fierce hug. She turned it up, hoping he remembered it  as well as she did.

The look in his eyes when he looked at her assured her that he did. She closed her eyes and  concentrated on those few minutes in time when they’d listened to this song together, while she tried  to teach him how to make pancakes that first time in her kitchen, the radio on, and he’d slow danced  with her, the flour on her apron brushed off on his clothes, some on her cheek he tried to wipe off  with a wet thumb. Funny, she’d completely forgotten about that morning. A sad song...

_ Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, and she’s always gone too long, anytime she goes away... _

* * *

They parked, got visitor passes on the ground floor, and took the elevator up to Skinner’s office, in  the same place it had been two years ago. No gaggles of school children visiting on a Sunday. The  last time Mulder had been here was when he received the assignment to go to Juárez. The last time  she’d been here she’d been running on an average of four hours of sleep, and had been begging  Skinner to keep the X-Files open, promising not to drive another partner away.

Skinner had hired a new secretary who didn’t know their nicknames, the water cooler bets on the  Spookys sleeping together after hours. Skinner opened his office door himself. 

“Agent Mulder,” he greeted, “nice to have you back among the living.” His eyes widened as he took  in the redhead beside the former agent. Thinner, taller, her face a sharp contrast to the one she’d  worn in his office that last day. He had a brief flash of her in Mulder’s wet sweatshirt and black  leggings, holding herself on the curb in front of his apartment, vomiting on the floor in that morgue. G one was the Dana Scully who’d lost her partner to a tragic suicide. Here she stood, her anger  carefully contained, next to the man whose death had caused the F.B.I to lose one of its finest agents.

“Dana,” Skinner said, nodding at her. “Come in, both of you.”

She hesitated when Mulder moved forward. He looked back at her questioningly. “Scully?”

“I’ll wait out here,” she said. “You two should talk alone.”

Mulder nodded, then touched her hand. “Okay.”

She didn’t care if Skinner saw. He already knew, everyone probably knew.

The two men disappeared behind the Assistant Director’s closed office door. She took a seat on the  small couch outside and crossed her legs, hands on her lap. Skinner’s secretary started filing her  nails.

She’d been eager to get back to work after Mulder’s funeral, and insisted within a few days that she  was ready. Bureau policy, however, required her to go through at least five sessions with an assigned  therapist, with recommendation to continue sessions for up to six months after losing her partner. So,  she’d packed some concealer around her eyes to hide the circles, dressed carefully, and come to see  Karen Kosseff, determined to pass the five sessions with flying colors as swiftly as possible before  returning to work.

It hadn’t been as easy as she’d thought. She’d never been a good liar, and although she’d rehearsed  all of her responses to the questions she expected to be asked, she found herself clamming up and  refusing to answer questions, knowing if she did the tight grip she kept on her emotions would  loosen, and terrible things would come flying out.

Something that worked its way out by the second session was the truth of her relationship with  Mulder. She hadn’t meant to reveal it, and it felt horribly invasive knowing that someone outside of  her family knew, but it seemed to please Kosseff. Soon all of the questions seemed to revolve around  their personal life. By the fifth session she was more forthcoming.

“Was there anything that might have occurred in the preceding months that could have provoked Agent Mulder to take his own life?” she asked.

Dana shook her head, then reconsidered. “The only thing...I had a miscarriage in September,” she said slowly. “He was there. I hadn’t known I was pregnant...but I doubt that had anything to do with it.”

Kosseff nodded. “And what was his reaction?”

Dana thought back to that night. “He cried, he held me, he asked if it was  his fault.”

“And what was your own reaction?”

“I was...” she searched for the right words, “saddened, of course, but I had known for several years  that I couldn’t have children. If I had known, if I had been aware of the pregnancy I would have felt  it more acutely, I think...” 

For an instant she heard the child's scream again, the relief on his face at the sight of his mother. And for an instant she imagined herself the mother, the boy burying his face in her hair, a little warm body in her arms, half of her and half of Mulder.

...She’d woken with the sun that September morning, blinking sleepily for a few minutes before  sliding out of bed. She stretched a little against the cramps, went to change the pad in her underwear,  then shuffled to the kitchen, fiddling through Mulder’s cabinets. Moments later, he followed into the  kitchen as well, concerned.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Kettle?”

He went to the cabinet next to her and opened it, bending to shuffle through various pots and pans he  had somehow accumulated but never used. He emerged with a tea kettle. “I don’t have much in the  way of tea,” he apologized.

“No, I wanted to make a hot water bottle,” she explained, “My back hurts.” She touched her lower  back, pressing.

His eyes darted to her belly, then her face. “I’ll take care of it,” he told her, moving to the sink and  filling up the kettle, “you go back to bed.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. It feels better to stand up right now.”

He checked her face to be sure, then put the kettle on, lighting the gas burner with a match and  blowing it out. “Where’s that hot water bottle?” he asked the cupboards, then held up a finger, went to the couch, lifted one of the cushions, and came back jiggling the empty water bottle.  She raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Mulder set it down on the counter and held his arms out for  her. She went to him willingly, and closed her eyes at the gentle press of a kiss on her head. His large  hand found her lower back.

“Here?”

She reached her own hand back and covered his, moving it down, applying pressure. She moaned  and melted into his chest, taking her hand away. He kept the pressure, and she closed her eyes. They  stayed like that for several minutes. She listened to the hum of the gas, the rustle of leaves outside as  the beginnings of autumn wind blew through the trees, tried to concentrate on the feeling of his warm  chest under her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Mulder,” she said quietly. He pressed a circle into her back, it felt wonderful.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, looking down.

“I don’t know,” she sniffed. “If this hadn’t happened...would you have wanted it?” They had known  each other for six years, but had only been sleeping together for ten months.

He took a deep breath, she felt his lungs expanding. “Yes.”

“Me, too,” she whispered. The kettle started whistling, and she moved out of his arms so he could go  make up the hot water bottle...

She didn’t like admitting it, but the therapy had helped, and she managed to get cleared for work  after the five mandatory sessions. She’d meant to go back to see Kosseff, she really had, only she’d  surrounded herself in work, let is consume her until she could barely breathe for two months. She’d  even thought of going to see someone after moving to Richmond, but the temptation to keep her  memories with him secreted away within her mind was too strong, and so she brought him back to  life in her head. It was a dangerous game.

The door to Skinner’s office opened and Mulder came out, looking much the same as he had when  he’d gone in. She stood from the couch and tried to read him but found she couldn’t. Skinner  appeared from behind him, saw her again, and came forward.  _ Please, don’t apologize, don’t you  _ _ dare apologize _ .

He held out his hand to shake hers, but she didn’t move to take it. His expression changed.

“I’m sorry, Dana,” he said, dropping his hand, and she saw that he meant it. Still, she couldn’t bring  herself to forgive him. “I’m sorry you had to suffer like that.”

She looked to Mulder and her eyes burned with threatening tears, then back to Skinner.

"You’re looking for something that isn’t there!" he’d barked in his office that February day, and her  chin had trembled.

"Please-"

"It was a suicide, Scully. And it’s over."

Tears had skated down her cheeks. "But he can’t, he couldn’t, I just can’t believe he’d..."

"Why can’t you believe, Scully?"

She’d looked at her boss then, utterly defeated, her emotions out on the table like a lost bet.  "Because he loved me."

And now here he was, apologizing. She looked at him, and didn’t blink.

“What the hell do you know about my suffering?” she asked, incredulous, then moved her eyes back

to Mulder, telling him she wanted to go.

* * *

They went to the Jewish bakery in Georgetown, even though it made her heart twist like good-luck  fingers in her chest. That burnt-pancake Sunday morning. She ordered coffee and indulged in a  cinnamon roll. He went for a sandwich. There was sauerkraut on it and she fought the urge to hold  her coffee up to her nose to mask the scent.

“So, when do you start?” she asked.

“Two weeks,” he said, wiping the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin. “Doesn’t give me a lot  of time.”

She put her coffee down, noticing the coral stain her lips left on the white rim. “Mulder, in your will  you left me money. Now, I haven’t touched it, but you don’t have a bank account anymore. What do  you want me to do with it?”

He shook his head. “You should keep it. The F.B.I owes me two years of pay. I’ll be fine.”

She didn’t know what he meant, or if he was joking. Whatever the case, she wasn’t holding on to  money that didn’t belong to her. “Mulder, take the money. It makes me feel weird having it.”

He moved on as if he hadn’t heard her. “I forgot how good these sandwiches were.”

She sighed, frustrated that she had to be the one to bring up the subject. “Mulder, I live in Richmond  now...I have a job.” They hadn’t ever discussed living together, not even before. Home was  wherever they were, it didn’t matter whose bed, whose kitchen, whose towels. Why would they ever  live together now? That part of her that had once longed for safety was now longing for stability. She  wanted him near her, not two hours away. Maybe he’d come visit on the weekends? Maybe kissing  her yesterday had been a reminder of good times. But it hadn’t seemed like it.

“So, I...where are you planning to live?” she finally asked.

He took a sip of water. “I’ll find somewhere cheap in the city, but I can stay with the guys until I get  back on my feet.”

She wondered how the Gunmen had taken the news. Then again, knowing them, they’d probably  known all along, too.

She nodded. “Okay. Well, I have to be in early tomorrow. I guess I could drop you off and head  back.”

“Scully,” he said, looking up at her. “There’s a position at Quantico. Skinner says it’s yours, if you  want.”

She pursed her lips. “I see. He found it easier to tell you, I take it.”

“He  _ is _ sorry for how things happened. You have to know that, Scully,” he said.

“Does he think he’s playing matchmaker now? I suppose he thinks I’ll just quit my job and follow  wherever you lead all over again.” There was deep bitterness in her words. The worst part was that  she was grateful, grateful beyond measure, and knew that she’d probably do exactly what he was  proposing. It infuriated her. The fact that she’d picked up her whole life and moved away to begin a  new one, and now had the opportunity to come back to where she’d been happy was unbelievable.

Mulder shrugged, but continued to look at her. “I don’t want you to do something you’d regret,  Scully,” he said. “I don’t want you to follow wherever I lead. But I meant what I said yesterday, to  your mom.”

_ Of course I still care for her. _

“I know it’s strange, and it’s never what we expected, and it’s been two years,” he continued. “I  know it’s hard to forgive me.”

She knew that if she disappeared for twice as long he’d forgive her the instant she reappeared. Why  was there still latent anger within her? Why couldn’t she let herself be happy? Why was it all so  complicated?

“Mulder, I think you need to see something,” she said, looking at him, her voice soft but serious.


	7. Chapter 7

They parked in the small lot by St. Francis’ church and she led him through to the cemetery, which  began in the walled-in confines of the church property, visible from the road, but continued far back  to accommodate its large congregation, stretching along a flat grassy piece of land, punctured at neat  intervals by planted dogwoods that bloomed in springtime. Now the branches were bare even of  snow and the ground was wet and muddy under their shoes as Dana led him through the church  cemetery and onto the wide expanse of graves behind.  Some headstones took the form of smooth, marbled stone, set flat into the ground, others stood  boldly upright with ornate decorations carved into them. Angels knelt at the foot of others, holding  small bouquets of fake flowers, worn brown by rain. His was at the end of the fifth row, way at the  back. She led the way slowly, but didn’t take his hand to give him any comfort. As Mulder  approached the grave and stopped beside her he saw it.

His headstone stood up from the ground, simple grey marble, with his name carved neatly.

FOX WILLIAM MULDER

LOVING FRIEND

1961-2000

“The truth will set you free.” John 8:32

No angel crouched at the bottom, but someone had trimmed the growing grass that sprouted up  around the base of the headstone, and a small gathering of artificial poppies lay at the foot. She bent  down and picked up the flowers, realizing they didn’t serve a purpose, and moved them to reveal one  of Tommy’s precious pull-back racing cars, an M on the side in Sharpie that bled into the ground.  Mulder crouched and picked up the wet car, turning the cold metal over in the palm of his hand.

“Leave the flowers,” he said thickly. She looked at him, confused.

“But-”

“Someone is buried here, Scully.” He took the flowers from her gloved hands and put them back at the foot of the grave, then stood up, the car held tightly in his hand.

“We came on your birthday,” she said quietly, and for the first time understood the saying ‘silent  as the grave’. “Ginny wanted to clean up the leaves and weeds, and Tommy left that as a present.”

It was too much. Mulder pulled her close, and she gasped at the shock of his rain-wet lapel against  her cheek, his cold lips on the crown of her head, her misted brow. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and  pressed her more firmly into him to the point of discomfort, but she wrapped an arm around to rest on  his back. Was he crying? She didn’t forgive him out loud, but part of the pain coiled inside of her  loosened. The suicide wasn’t his fault, she knew this now. But she had needed him to understand the  cold finality of death; how, in the end, all that remained was a smooth stone with your name carved  into it and a bouquet of fake flowers, a car ride away from your family. “I’m sorry, Scully,” he said  again, and she patted his back.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said, extracting her face from his coat and looking up to find his eyes wet.  She reached down for his hand and squeezed, then led him away, this time walking slowly with him  through the rows of graves and back to the car. Once inside, her in the driver’s seat, Mulder turned to  her.

“I want to see them,” he said, “Charlie, Ginny, the kids. I mean, if you have time, if it isn’t inconvenient.”

She widened her eyes. “Uh, Mulder, do you really think you’re ready?”  He started to speak, but she continued on, searching for the right words. “I mean, you’re back for  two days and you’ve already seen Skinner, me, my mom...don’t you think that’s enough for the first  thirty-six hours? Emotionally?”

He looked determined. “I’m fine, Scully, I’ve been waiting two years to see you, I think that’s more  than enough preparation.”

She tilted her head in concession. “I’ll call Charlie, see if they’re home," she said, and pulled out her phone.

“Hi, Charlie, it’s me,” she greeted after three rings, trepidation in her voice.

“Dana, what the hell?” he answered, and she winced. “Mom called this morning, explained everything. Is it true? Mulder’s back? He’s alive?”

She nodded, looking at Mulder in the passenger seat. “Yeah, he’s back. Listen, Charlie, he wants to  come see you guys today.”

A pause on the other end of the phone. “Um, okay. I’ll tell her. Did you guys want to have dinner or  something?”

She shook her head. “No, no, that’s okay, we’ll just come say hi to everyone.”

A small ‘Daddy, who is it?’ interrupted Charlie’s response. “Okay, Dana. Come by in about an  hour? Then everybody will be ready.”

She nodded again. “Okay, sounds good.”

Charlie hung up first, and she handed Mulder her phone to hold onto while she started the car and  pulled out of the spot, back down to the road. It took fifteen minutes to get to Charlie’s from here, but  she could kill time by at least getting Mulder some new clothes. She headed toward the mall,  purposefully avoiding his gaze, hoping he wouldn’t say anything.

“What aren’t you telling me, Scully?” he asked, and she sighed.

“Ginny had a sister,” she said, flicking the turn signal on.

“ _Had_ a sister?”

She nodded. “Her name was Lucy. Identical twins. Lucy’s kidneys started to fail when she was  twelve years old. Ginny was a match, and got consent from her parents and the courts to donate a  kidney when she was thirteen.”

She felt his eyes on her, but she kept hers on the road. “The transplant failed. Lucy died six months  later. I think Ginny’s always blamed herself.”

“That’s awful,” Mulder said, his voice gentle. “But it wasn’t her fault.”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. But I think the fact that you’re back, back from the dead,  might not exactly be welcome news to Ginny, who can never see her sister again. She took your  death very badly.”

“You think we shouldn’t go?” he asked.

She sighed again. “I think you’re going to see them at some point or another, no matter what.  They’re my family. It’s never going to be less of a shock to see you.”

* * *

He followed her patiently through Old Navy and took the dark jeans and shirts she handed him, all a  size smaller than the clothing he was currently wearing, which was slightly too big and made him  look skinnier than he really was. She sat on the bench outside the changing rooms and waited,  watching other couples doing their shopping, the women picking up sweaters and holding them at  arm’s length before checking the price, the men nodding at whatever their wives or girlfriends  suggested would look good on them, not even slightly interested...

Going through Mulder’s clothes, not just his dress shirts, his suit jackets, but also his ties, his t-shirts;  articles of clothing that had trailed behind them on those fragrant summer nights, muffling cries of  pleasure into his shoulder or the bedclothes as they made love with open windows in his stuffy, hot  apartment, the curtains moving in a flirting breeze. This t-shirt, heather grey, she’d pulled on one  night when the air turned cool from a June rain, a shirt he’d pulled off so he could kiss her breasts  and hold her naked in his lap as the sun came up through a primrose dawn, punctured by gasps and  answering groans. This pair of socks that swallowed her feet but which he’d forced her to wear in  February, when he complained her feet were like size seven icicles. She moved her fingers over the  fabrics as through a field of wheat.

The last day, the day she was to hand in their keys, she stood in the center of the raped room, letting  the slow stunned jumble of feelings roll down inside of her, sorting themselves out like apples falling  into holes on a sizing board in a co-op warehouse. It was not enough that Mulder was dead. Now all  the things that would help keep him with her were gone too. She ran her hands on the shelf of an  empty bookcase.

She didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t stand the look of the bare walls and floorboards; and anyway,  the trunk of her car was open and if she wanted to keep things in storage she better get moving  before someone stole them. She stopped at the door, picturing herself opening it and waking up from  a dream. She often did this, focusing on a vision of Mulder leaning down in front of his fish tank,  counting them. When she opened the door, there he would be, waiting to come inside again.

“Scully?” Mulder called, and she walked back to the dressing rooms, no doors, just a curtain. There  he was, a little thinner, but wearing clothing that resembled what he’d reached for on weekends two  years ago. “Okay?”

She nodded. “Hand me the tags, you can wear the clothes out of here.”

“Well, that was easy. Should we be picking out china patterns or what?”

He took off the various tags and, like a boy buying new shoes for the school year, wore the new  clothes out of the store, his other ones in a bag. “Do you want a new coat?” she asked.

“You don’t like the cowboy look?” he asked, mock-wounded. The jacket just didn’t fit him, and held  onto water. She scrunched her nose a little. “I think we have our answer. Fifteen minutes later they were walking back to the car, right on schedule. She wore her navy wool  coat, belted at the waist, with a dark green scarf, Mulder in iron-grey, similar to what he’d worn two  Decembers ago. It was selfish of her, but she wanted as much of him back as she could. She  wondered if he felt the same. Did he like her hair shorter, did he miss their trench coats?

She thought back to the Saturday they’d decided to drive to Humpback Rock, hiked to the top,  where the Blue Ridge Mountains rolled in, low and long and lazy, like weary travelers coming  home. The air was clear and cold, even in May, and she wore a blue Patagonia fleece over her long- sleeved shirt, while he was content in the sweatshirt he’d thrown on that morning when she’d picked  him up. She’d packed some things to eat, just some cheese and crackers, trail mix, and apple slices,  and sat down on a lower expanse of cold rock, opening ziplock bags and arranging them neatly,  putting her water bottle on a stack of napkins to keep them from blowing away.

“Honey, look at me,” Mulder had said from across the expanse of rock, and she’d looked up,  puzzled at the term of endearment. He had the disposable camera she’d bought him before the K nicks game, and snapped a picture of her before she could protest.

“What did you call me?” she asked as he walked over and sat down next to her, reaching into the  bag of trail mix to pick out the peanut M&Ms.

“Relax, Scully, I just wanted to document your ‘annoyed’ face,” he said, setting the camera down  between them. She raised her eyebrow.

“I see. How many do you have left? Why don’t you take pictures of the mountains? We probably  won’t be back here before the leaves change.”

He nodded. “In a minute. I wonder why they’re blue.”

She took a bite of a Gala apple. “Isoprene.”

“Bless you!”

She rolled her eyes but smiled. “It’s an organic compound. The oak and maple trees release isoprene,  which goes into the atmosphere. That’s why they look sort of hazy, and blue.” Wind whispered over  the mountain, skating along the rock and blowing through her hair. She finished her apple slice and  tucked hair behind her ears. She hadn’t blow-dried it that morning before driving to his apartment,  letting it dry naturally as she prepared the snacks, so that now it was darker red and wavy.

“Your hair looks nice,” he’d said casually. She put a hand on her hair, remembering that it was  unstyled.

“Thank you.” She caught him looking at her like he was going to kiss her, and she smiled with her  eyes, pushed his arm with her boot. “Go on, take some pictures of those mountains.”

She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped an arm around them, occasionally picking up a  cracker or raisin to eat while he walked around and took pictures, his own hair blowing in the wind.  There were a few other hikers, some families who’d come up that afternoon. Eventually he came  back, handing her the camera.

“One left. Do with it what you will,” he said, tossing her the little camera. She caught it with her left  hand and stood, looking through the viewfinder, panning around the cloud-dusted sky, the bluffs of  plants growing stubbornly by the rocks. She took several steps away and turned, watching Mulder.

“Over here, babe,” she called, and he turned toward her voice. She snapped a picture and wound the  film forward.

“Well played,” he said when she sat down beside him again and stretched her legs out in front of her,  leaning over and touching her fingers easily to her toes, enjoying the stretch in her calves. When she  sat up he was looking out over the blue mountains, and she leaned over to kiss his cheek, her  fingertips in the soft hair at the back of his head. He turned his head and stole a kiss from her lips,  lingering for barely three seconds, like a man and women who had the rest of their lives to fill with  affection.

They forgot about the disposable camera until August, when she found it in the backpack she’d worn  that day and gone to get them developed. Plenty were from the Knicks game, blurry action shots, a  few from a case they’d been on, and then the ones from that day. Her makeup-free face with its  raised eyebrows, auburn hair unchecked, a bag of apple slices in her hand. Several rather good  nature shots, then the picture of him. He looked like a dog after hearing the word ‘walk’, like he was  milliseconds away from jumping up and rushing toward her. They never called each other by pet  names after that day, but those pictures served as a reminder of the one time they had.

* * *

She parked by Charlie’s car and exhaled deeply, looking at Mulder. “Ready?”

He nodded, and they stepped out and shut the doors behind them. It had stopped raining, but was still  cold. As Mulder knocked on the door of the red townhouse, they heard the sound of a stringed  instrument stop abruptly inside. The door opened, and Charlie took them in, clearly trying not to stare  at Mulder longer than was polite.

“Come on in,” he said, clearing his throat a little. “You want something to drink?”

Dana started removing her gloves. “Maybe some tea?”

Charlie nodded and waited while she took off her coat and scarf, hung them on the coat rack. Charlie  and Ginny’s home decor was eccentric -nothing matched, the artwork on the walls consisted of  abstract, swirling oil paintings, framed sheet music that looked ancient, and art-nouveau posters. A  patchwork quilt lay across one side of the couch, along with a bulky, crocheted throw pillow. An old  piano with what looked like ivory keys. Compared to Bill’s naval base housing, this was a hippie  den. They followed Charlie through to the open kitchen straight ahead that overlooked the living  room. The refrigerator was covered in magnets from different cities across the world, children’s  artwork, and family photos. The faint smell of incense lingered through the rooms.

“So, Mom told us a little about what happened,” Charlie said, putting some water on to boil and  reaching into a cabinet for a mug. “Sounds like you’ve been through hell.”

Mulder shrugged. “It wasn’t easy for you all, either,” he said. Charlie nodded.

“She said it wasn’t your fault, how it all got handled.”

Dana leaned against the counter and sighed. “No, it wasn’t his fault.”

Charlie exchanged a look with his sister.  _ Are you happy? _

_ Yes _ , she answered.

A door opened and closed down the hall and soon a redheaded boy came into the kitchen. “Dad?”  Tommy, now eight years-old, looked exactly like his father. He saw his aunt, then Mulder, and went  over to Charlie, leaning into him, not understanding.

“Hi, Tommy,” Mulder said. “Remember me?”

Tommy nodded solemnly. “Aunt Dana said you went away to Heaven.”

Dana cleared her throat, and Tommy looked at her. “He did go away, but now he’s back.”

Charlie ruffled his son’s hair and Tommy turned back to Mulder, quietly taking him in. More  footsteps padded down the hall, and soon four year-old Lucy tumbled in. She saw Dana and melted  into her aunt, her head against her hip. Dana brushed strawberry hair out of her eyes.

“Mommy’s crying,” she announced, then looked at Mulder. “Hi.” She had been two the last time  she’d seen him, and it was unlikely she had any memory of him, although she’d heard his name.

“Hi,” Mulder said, his voice warm.

“I’ll go talk to Ginny,” Charlie said, moving away from his son. “Don’t touch the stove, kids,” he  reminded before leaving. They listened to the hum of the water in the kettle, beginning to boil.

“Do you still like those pull-back racing cars?” Mulder asked Tommy, who nodded.

“Yeah, I have a whole box of ‘em. Wanna see?”

“I have some, too!” Lucy piped in, her voice like a bell.

“Why don’t you two get the cars out in the living room and set up the race track,” Dana suggested,  and her nephew and niece hurried off. She opened up the door to one cupboard and sifted through  the boxes of tea until she found one she liked, then put the teabag in the mug and poured hot water  over it. “Want some, Mulder?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks. Might not want to get too comfortable.”

Dana sighed. “Don’t worry, it’s just a shock. To everyone.”

“Charlie seemed okay. Tommy, too.”

She smirked. “My brother has always been very forgiving and open to change. Remember how  interested he was in that Big Blue case?”

“It was then that I knew I’d found my favorite Scully.”

She smiled. Another smattering of footsteps as two year-old Sophie dashed into the living room with  her siblings, and then Charlie appeared with his arm around his wife, whose eyes were red-rimmed.  Long, dark hair fell like water down her left shoulder, and she wore a bohemian 70s-ish peasant top  under loose overalls, looking as young as ever. She saw Mulder and sniffed, then rushed forward  and into his arms. Whatever he had expected, it certainly wasn’t this. Ginny wept a little in his arms,  then kissed his cheek.

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered. She pulled back to look at him again, then reached for Dana’s  hand, going to embrace her as well. “Oh, Dana.” She stepped away from them and laughed a little,  wiped her eyes as if embarrassed. “Hormones,” she used as an excuse, then patted Mulder’s chest  again. “You absolutely have to stay for dinner,” she continued. “I was going to make pasta since it’s  easy but Charlie could probably go get a couple rotisserie chickens. I could make mashed potatoes.  Mulder, I remember you liked the ones I made that one time.”

“Mulder! The track is set up!” Tommy cried, zooming into the kitchen again, taking Mulder’s hand  and tugging insistently. “Come on!”

The sound of tumbling blocks came from the living room, followed by Sophie’s baby laugh and  delighted clapping. Ginny looked up at hearing her son’s voice, then smiled at Mulder. “Go on,” she  shooed him out, laughing a little, then sniffing. When he left she turned to her sister-in-law. “Oh, you  must be so happy!” she exclaimed, trying to be quiet.

“I am,” Dana assured her, “I am. It’s just not...what I was expecting.”

Charlie snorted and took a sip of his sister’s tea. “It doesn’t happen that often.”

“So, what are you guys going to do?”

She felt uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Mulder’s got a job...offer, I guess, working at the Behavioral  Science Unit here in Washington, which he’s taking. The Assistant Director said there was a post at  Quantico, that I could have it, if I want.”

Ginny’s eyes lit up. “That would be great! You guys could live nearby, one of the violinist's wife is a  real estate agent, I’m sure she could find somewhere-”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Charlie said, holding a hand up. “What about your job in Richmond? You’re  gonna quit?”

Dana shrugged. “I just...don’t know, for now. I’ll be at work tomorrow morning. It sounds like  Mulder’s going to stay with some friends up here for the next couple weeks.”

Charlie put a hand on her arm. “How are you doing, Dana?”

It was the first time since Mulder’s resurrection that someone had asked her how she’d taken the  news. Her kid brother who always looked out for others. Their eyes were the same, like  looking up at a spring day through cool mountain water. She smiled a little. "I’m okay.”

Ginny looked down at the baby monitor on the counter as it blinked, the sound of the youngest  Scully addition waking up from a nap. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and moved out of the kitchen  and down the hall to the staircase.

Dana took her tea from her brother’s hand and took what felt like a fortifying sip. He was still  looking at her with concern, those mirrored eyes. “Promise you’ll call if you need anything,” he said  softly. “Anything. You know how worried Ginny gets about you.”

She nodded. “I’ll call,” she promised.

Mulder’s voice from the front room, imitating the whoosh! of a race car. She ducked her head out of  the kitchen to watch him, on the ground with Tommy and the two girls, Sophie steadying herself  with a hand on his arm in the unconscious way young children depend on adults. He was completely  absorbed in the game, his dirty shoes off in the entryway. Dana followed his example and shed her  heels, going to put them with the other shoes as Ginny came down the hall, the baby stretching  awake against her shoulder, mouth opening in a sleepy yawn.

“You want to take her?” Ginny asked quietly, looking at Dana with merry green eyes. She nodded,  and Ginny completed a deft mother-of-four move, laying the baby blanket over Dana’s chest and  depositing the newborn in her waiting arms, then tucking the ends of the blanket over the baby’s  back. “I’ll go make a grocery list, you just relax,” Ginny said, and Dana went with Charlie to the  living room. Three little Scullys looked up as they walked in.

“Daddy, watch me!” Lucy commanded, and waited for her father’s eyes before pulling back a metal  car and watching it whiz down the plastic track, then halfway up an upside-down loop before falling.

Tommy also wanted his father’s attention, so Dana went to the couch and sat down, curling her feet  up underneath her. Sophie walked over and climbed up next to her aunt, tilting her head to make  funny faces at her little sister.

“Baby Katie,” she whispered, and reached up a hand to brush very carefully over the baby’s  head. “You have to be gentle,” she said, quite seriously, echoing what she’d surely heard from her  parents.

“Yes,” Dana said, her palm splayed over the baby’s back, enchanted by the soft warmth of her niece,  named after her, against her chest. A tiny fist batted at the fabric of her blouse. She pressed a soft kiss  to Katherine’s head and watched as Lucy dashed to the side of the room and came back with a pack  of Go Fish cards, spilling them on the carpet. Mulder looked up at her, a niece in her arms and  another curled up beside her; his eyes took her in, gleaming suddenly with a surprised gladness.

* * *

_ November, 2000 _ . She looked at Mulder, sitting with Tommy on the floor, helping him put together  the new train set they’d given him for his sixth birthday, his concentration broken by Lucy, who  plucked some confetti from the floor and came over to him, stretching to put some on his shoulder.  Mulder chuckled and Lucy giggled back, going back for more, leaving a trail behind her. Dana set  her glass of wine down on the kitchen counter and turned, passing her mother, who was holding  baby Sophie and chatting with Ginny.

Dana opened the door to the porch and stepped into November air that smelled like woodsmoke. She  inhaled deeply, eyes closed, laughter and sounds of the birthday muffled in her mother’s house. Her  fists were clenched by her sides and her eyes stung. Breath like a wispy cloud as she exhaled. She  opened her eyes at the sound of the porch door opening, then closing gently.

“Mulder-” she started.

“It’s me,” a voice with the warmth of a viola came from behind her. Dana turned around.

“Oh, Ginny, sorry.” Her sister-in-law handed her the green shawl she’d draped over herself earlier  while nursing the baby. Dana smiled a little and took it, wrapping it around her shoulders. Ginny  nodded, her large green eyes held concern. She sat down on the wicker sofa and patted the spot  beside her, smoothing dark brown hair behind her ears. Dana took a breath and sat beside her, arms  wrapped around herself.

“What’s wrong?” Ginny asked, her voice suggesting that she expected an answer.

Dana had known Ginny since high school, when they’d both had braces. She’d spent lots of time at  the Scullys' house when they’d settled on the east coast. Dana had practiced French braids on  Ginny’s straight hair. When she got her period during Algebra in ninth grade, Ginny had sought out  Dana at the break to borrow a pad. And yet in many ways she was wiser than her husband’s older  sister. Maybe it had something to do with being a mother. She knew when something wasn’t right.

Dana smiled a little sadly. “Did Mom ever tell you that I can’t have children?”

Ginny’s eyes widened. “No, she didn’t.”

Something bloomed in Dana’s chest, grateful her mother had kept her secret.

“I’m sorry,” Ginny said. Ginny, who, at the age of thirty-two already had three children of her own.

One of the kindest, most selfless people Dana had ever met. Compassion radiated from her like light  off water.

Dana nodded. Her eyes were dry now. “I had a miscarriage in September, with Mulder. So I guess I  can get pregnant, I just can’t keep it.”

Ginny bit her lip. “I’ve had one, too,” she admitted. “At nine weeks.”

Dana looked up, surprised.

“Before Sophie,” she said, her voice soft. “It happens to a lot of women, Dana. It doesn’t always  mean you can’t have children.”

Dana felt terrible. She’d never resented her brothers their families, but she’d never considered the fact  that perhaps it hadn’t been as easy as it looked from the outside. She didn’t want to argue, to insist  that her doctors had told her she would never carry a child. “God, Ginny, I’m sorry,” she said. “Why  didn’t you tell me?”

Ginny looked sad, then wrapped her arm around Dana. “I’m telling you now.” She smoothed a palm  over her sister-in-law’s back, then cleared her throat and sat up straight, looking at Dana seriously.  “Mulder loves you,” she said, her voice serious. “He loves you more than anything, Dana. He loves  you for who you are. If you become a mother, he’ll love  you. If you don’t, he’ll love you.” Ginny spoke about them as if she knew they’d always be together.  There was no doubt in her mind.

Dana sniffed, then chuffed out a laugh. “Who taught you how to be so wise?”

Ginny smiled a wide smile. “You did,” she said, squeezing Dana’s shoulder. “Don’t you remember  what you told me before I auditioned for the Conservatory?”

Dana tried to think back thirteen years, when she was three years into med school and Charlie and  his girlfriend were both auditioning for spots in the same conservatory out of high school. It was  extremely selective. Ginny, who had practically been recruited, knew she was auditioning to check  off a box. She was already in, but Charlie’s situation wasn’t the same. He had to beat out a hundred  other pianists, most of whom had been playing longer than he had, been taught by highly trained  teachers. He had natural talent, but realistically just wasn’t at the same level.

“What if I get in and he doesn’t?” Ginny had asked, chewing at one nail, her cello propped up in one  hand as they sat in the hallway, bow across her knees. Dana had driven her brother and Ginny to the  auditions that afternoon. Knowing Ginny, she’d rather blow the audition and train in an orchestra  with Charlie rather than give it her best and get in.

Dana looked at her. “Charlie loves you ,” she’d said. “He loves you more than anything, more than  your talent. If you’re in and he isn’t, he’ll still love you.”

Ginny had looked at her miserably, her green eyes impossibly large in her young face. “I should just  play the Saint-Saëns, it’s less flourishy.” Her hand was trembling.

Dana shook her head. “Play the Elgar Concerto.” It was a violent piece, rough and difficult compared to Saint-Saën’s slow, beautiful Swan. “Play it, and don’t worry about Charlie. Whatever happens, happens.” What she hadn’t ever told Ginny was that she’d given a very similar pep talk to her younger brother while he waited...

* * *

“Scully.” Mulder’s voice, the brush of a finger across her cheek. She looked up at him, confused,  then immediately glanced at her chest, distressed when she didn’t see Katherine.

“Where’s the baby?” she asked, sitting up, then realizing that Sophie was laying partly on her, open- mouthed and fast asleep.

Ginny came into view, Katherine safely snuggled against her chest in the familiar red sling she’d  used for all her babies. “You fell asleep!” she laughed good-naturedly, patting the baby’s bottom.  Evidently, no one had been injured when she dozed off. “There’s dinner, if you’re hungry,” she said.  “I fed the kids some pasta thirty minutes ago and they all crashed.”

Charlie came over and picked up his daughter, limp as a plucked weed, carefully carrying her down  the hall and into her room while Dana sat up and yawned, brushing hair out of her eyes. “I’m so  tired,” she said wryly.

“Well, maybe something to eat will wake you up,” Ginny said.

“You’re going to drive back to Richmond tonight, right?” Mulder asked quietly as she stretched.

She looked at him sleepily. “Yep. Work tomorrow. Bright and early. Am I dropping you off  somewhere?”

Mulder nodded. “With the Gunmen. Called them while you were napping.”

“They didn’t know all this time, did they?” she asked, standing up and taking his hand, squeezing as  she walked into the dining area of the kitchen.

“No,” he said. “But you know them. Hearing that someone’s risen from the dead isn’t exactly news  fresh off the press.”

Charlie and Ginny’s kitchen table took the form of a vintage diner booth, complete with formica  marbling and red seats. If their family grew any more, they’d have to invest in something larger, but  for now it only added to the quirky charm of their house. Scully turned to him and put a hand on his  chest, using the moment of privacy to smile at him.

“No more dead jokes,” she said. Her tone teased, but part of her was serious as a judge.

He nodded, and brought her in for a quick hug. She breathed him in, a smell as familiar as rain, even  in newly-purchased clothes. She didn’t want to leave him here in Washington. She wanted him to be  footsteps away. But they had always led their separate lives, even during that precious year together.  That longing for safety was back again, only heightened after the events of the past two days. Her  whole life had been thrown into arctic water, and she’d gotten used to it, and all of a sudden  someone had pulled her out from among the icebergs and into a world of warmth and sunlight. She  wanted to imagine them together, but it never seemed to work. She’d never lived with anyone for  long. Always feeling stifled the moment their toothbrush took up residence beside hers. God, why  was she thinking of them living together, here in her brother’s dining room ?

No, she would go back to Richmond tonight, even if made her anxious. She would think her life  over in the car, at home. She would get some sleep, which now taunted her like fireflies in a  meadow. She needed to sleep. Memories kept jumping her like muggers in the dark.


	8. Chapter 8

In her apartment she typed up her autopsy notes from Friday night, which now seemed to exist in another universe, one she never wanted to revisit but haunted her like a constant dripping, echoing off the walls of a great cavern. It was late and she was giddy with exhaustion, but sleep was a lover that refused to be touched. She turned off her feelings and focused on her report.

...' _ there are multiple penetrating fragment injuries of the anterior thorax and left thigh. There are gaping lacerations of the left lower abdomen and thigh with partial evisceration of sigmoid colon and small intestine. There are flash burns of the anterior thorax  _ ...'

She was so practiced at it now that the moment she’d lifted the sheet to reveal the middle-aged man on her table on Friday afternoon she’d known the cause of death. It wasn’t what the report predicted, this man they’d found at the construction site, mangled, presumed to have died of work-related injuries.

_ CAUSE OF DEATH: Blast and fragment injuries. _

_ MANNER OF DEATH: Homicide _

She took a long, hot shower after completing her report, the pipes in the old building complaining like hungry men coming home to no dinner. Seeing him in that doorway, her sobbing, arguing with him, kissing him like some desperate woman out of work in Petrograd, her mother’s fiery arrival, Skinner’s outstretched hand, the wet cemetery, Ginny rushing into Mulder’s arms, Katherine’s peach-soft head on her shoulder, the weekend washed through her hair and circled the drain, mixing with soap bubbles that swirled around her feet like iridescent marbles.

She dressed quickly and fell into bed like a pheasant shot down in the hunt, closing her eyes when her head hit the cold pillow and curling up in the dark womb of bedsheets. A blind reach for the down comforter, and she was on her way to sleep. As good as being buried, the earth close around you, heavy and soft, lovely with silence.

* * *

The phone rang, and she looked up from Mulder’s autopsy report for what seemed the hundredth time. In that terrible night’s madness she’d begged them through tears, vomit down her chest, to let her perform the autopsy herself. She’d held onto the cold side of the gurney with white-knuckled hands and pleaded with the detective.

“I  _ have  _ to be the one to do it.” Her voice was rough, her throat burning with the sudden onslaught of grief. “I  _ have  _ to know.”

But they’d just bundled her back into Skinner’s car through her screaming and struggling and he’d driven her back to Mulder’s place, where she’d knocked the water glass on his bedside table to the ground as she stumbled to the bed -water and shards hit the floor like a split melon. And it was then that she wept, on her knees by his bed, gathering the larger bits of wet glass and holding them in her palms. She hadn’t touched the cup in the four days he’d been gone, and here the water that had touched only his lips was already sinking into the floorboards around her, disappearing forever into the woodwork. ' _ GODDAMN IT, MULDER!' _

In the office, she stared at the ringing phone and didn’t move to answer it. Nothing good ever came over a phone line, she’d learned that now. The man across from her reached for it, but she was faster.

“Scully,” she said, already bored by whoever was on the other end.

“Agent Scully, Assistant Director Skinner would like to see you in his office," Skinner’s secretary informed her.

The dark-haired man on the other side of the desk, surely overhearing the call, became very interested in his hands, folded on his knees.

“When?” she asked, looking at him, twirling a pen in her hands. 

“Now, Agent Scully,” the secretary said with a sigh.

She hung up the phone and stood up from Mulder’s chair, closing the autopsy report in the manilla folder and leaving it on the desk. A quick look at the man in the chair, then she walked out to the elevator, her gait slow and resigned.

The elevator slowly filled as it climbed up, and she couldn’t help but think that none of it mattered anymore.

_ 'Yeah, he offed himself.' _

_ 'I heard she had to identify the body.' _

_ 'What’s her new partner’s name again?' _

People had always whispered about The Spookys, and it had bothered her a little, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. Now, it was just comical. Surely they could wait until she left the elevator. But none of it mattered. Like the difference between jumping from the fifteenth or sixteenth floor of a building -either way, the fall killed you.

“Agent Scully, I have a complaint here submitted by Agent Landau about your behavior on the case in Florida," Skinner said once she was sitting in front of him, holding up a folder. “Care to explain?”

She looked at his hand. “What’s the complaint?”

Skinner opened it and looked down, shaking his head. “Where do you want me to start? He says you verbally abused him on several occasions-”

She scoffed, and Skinner looked at her sharply before continuing. “Uh, he says you drove off in the rental car after coming back to the motel on Wednesday and didn’t return until two the next morning. He also feels you’re difficult to work with and routinely ignore his input.”

“Sounds like he needs to grow a thicker skin,” she said.

“Agent Scully, I know you want to work. I also see you passed the psych screening.” Skinner took a breath. “But you and I both know how...close you and Agent Mulder were, how especially difficult this is for you.”

He looked over at her then, and it was like sharing a glance with a statue.

“Agent Scully, I need you to try and work with Landau. And if it’s too hard, take some more time. Hell, take as much as you want.”

“If I leave you’ll close the X-Files, won’t you?”

He gave some roundabout answer that told her all she needed to know.

“I’ll try to work with him,” she said, “but I’m not going to coddle him. I was ten years younger than he is when I was assigned to the X-Files, and Mulder didn’t need to hold my hand.”

Skinner didn’t say anything, but his lips formed a line and he set the complaint down. She got up and left without another word, closing the door gently behind her and giving the secretary a tight smile before heading back to the elevator.

So, maybe she  _ had  _ been a bit unprofessional the past two days. She hadn’t gone crying to Skinner every time Mulder veered off the carefully regulated F.B.I-approved pathway for solving cases. She’d gritted her teeth and followed his footsteps, often pulling him back from danger just in time. If she'd filed a complaint every time he'd acted “unprofessionally” Skinner would have a whole drawer dedicated to Mulder alone. She wondered if Mulder had felt the same way she had, two days ago, when she’d been told Skinner was assigning her a new partner.

“Special Agent Scully, this is Special Agent Nathaniel Landau,” he’d said, and she’d shaken the man’s offered hand. He was shorter than Mulder, a little heavier, with a receding hairline. His hand was warm and slightly moist -he must have been nervous, although his face displayed confidence.

“Call me Nate,” he said, smiling. She nodded, but knew she wouldn’t.

Skinner offered some backstory, something about being assigned to Violent Crimes, something about a stint in an F.B.I field office, something about how he hoped they’d work well together.

Landau followed her to the elevator, and his presence made her feel like there was something stuck between two molars she couldn’t get out with her tongue. He seemed nice enough, but she didn’t want him standing next to her. She didn’t want him looking at her.

“So, Dana,” he said, watching her push the button, which lit up. They began the slow descent. “I’ve read about the X-Files. You’ve tackled some pretty weird stuff over the years.”

She studied her warped reflection on the silver door in front of her as he continued talking. “Seems pretty interesting. The Assistant Director said we’re headed to Florida this afternoon. I brought a travel bag, it’s in the trunk of my car. I can drive us to the airport.”

She nodded and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her suit jacket to stop fidgeting. “I’m sorry to hear about your partner, Dana,” Landau said gently. “I know how hard it must be.”

The elevator doors finally opened and she stepped out, then turned to him. “Have you ever lost a partner, Agent Landau?”

He paused, then shook his head.

On their afternoon plane he wouldn’t shut up about himself, about his past work, about why he chose the F.B.I. Landau was the sort of person who talked to fill the silence, and so she stared out the window at the whiteness, water droplets skating at diagonals down the glass as they flew through clouds. She read the dossier once Landau had finally finished his life story. Retirement home with a poltergeist problem. Skinner had to be joking.

After interviewing the elderly residents of the Rolling Hills Retirement Facility and several staff  members, Landau drove them back to the motel they’d checked into earlier, his stomach growling as he pulled into a spot.

“Well, I’m starving,” he announced. “I think I’ll order a pizza or something. Or we could go out somewhere. Lady’s choice.”

She opened her door and got out of the car. “I’m not hungry.”

He looked at her when he climbed out, his brow crinkled in worry. “Mom didn’t eat when her dad passed away, either. But you’ve got to keep your strength up,” he advised, “especially when you’re on the road like this. And if you need to talk to any-”

“Oh, will you just shut the hell up?!” she hissed. “Just shut up!”

He was taken aback. This was the most emotion she’d shown all day. “I’m sorry, Dana,” he apologized. “The Assistant Director said you’d be especially distressed, but I don’t think that’s an excuse to talk to me like-”

“Agent Landau, whatever the  _ Assistant Director  _ told you about my personal life, or that of Agent Mulder’s, wasn’t any of his business, and nor is it yours,” she bit out. “I will work with you, and I appreciate your concern, but it’s late, I’m tired, and I just want to be left the hell alone!”

He held up his hands and didn’t say anything, but an annoyed expression passed over his face. “They said  _ he  _ was crazy,” he muttered under his breath.

Anger burned down her spine, but she tossed him the key to his room and headed to her own, opening the thin door and slamming it behind her. She sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands, elbows on her knees, and groaned, stamped her foot on the ground. Skinner had them on some nonexistent poltergeist when she could have been meeting with the medical examiner who’d performed Mulder’s autopsy. That’s what he’d promised her -that she could investigate Mulder’s death in her spare time, as long as it didn’t affect her work and didn’t call for excessive F.B.I resources. That last part had made her bite the inside of her cheek, but she’d agreed, and now here’s what she had to deal with.

Well, the last thing she was going to do was sit here stranded like some sunburnt shipwreck survivor in a lifeboat. She picked up her set of car keys and grabbed her purse, heading out of the room and locking it behind her. The blinds on Landau’s room’s window flipped open as the car started and she pulled out of the spot, headed out of the lot, not even looking in the rearview mirror when he rushed out of the room and waved.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

She turned right and wove through the town’s sleepy, winding streets until she found the highway, and then she just drove. It was like her Christmas Eve in the car, only it was late February and she had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and no one asking her questions.  _ How do you feel?  _ What was it about asking someone how they felt? Like they  _ deserved  _ an answer from you. Death made its survivors famous. ' _ Look, she’s the one whose partner killed himself!'  _ It was like a tabloid, the aftermath. People seeing into your life when they had no right to, people asking personal questions like you owed them something. Those  _ desperate  _ fans, like the one who shot Lennon. He’d made the headlines in just as bold a font as Lennon had! And so it wasn’t enough that Mulder was  _ dead _ , that he’d  _ killed himself _ , it was also that  _ she  _ was still  _ alive _ .

She reached into her bag and took out the pack of cigarettes she’d been keeping in there as a personal challenge. To see how long she could make it before she broke and smoked one. The car  slowed as she held one between her lips and flicked the lighter, inhaled. When she blew the smoke out she almost coughed, it had been so long. There it was, that awful taste, like rotten root vegetables. The burn in her nostrils.

She’d bought the papers with the headlines about Lennon, with those pictures of crying teenage girls splayed over the front.

She’d flipped through a magazine in the grocery checkout line after Princess Diana had died. There was the fascinating side to tragedy. Curiosity won out over respect, and the public wanted to  _ know _ ; they wanted a  _ why _ , a  _ how,  _ and a  _ who.  _ That’s why  _ Titanic  _ had done so well at the movie theaters. That’s why Anna Anderson got away with being Anastasia. Because deep down, in the darkest parts of our minds, we could take in tragedy, as long as it wasn’t our own.

_ As long as it wasn’t our own _ . God, why would anyone  _ want  _ to know? And would this tragedy of hers ever end?  _ Could it _ , really? She took a long drag on the cigarette and flicked on the radio, done with the constant assault of memory and emotion surging within her like a tempest.

She was in the middle of nowhere, now. Forests on either side of the road. Whatever song it was played scratchily, like a blunt skate on ice. But she recognized the song immediately, and realized, with a stab of pain, that he’d never truly leave her. A song he’d sung in her mother’s front yard that day they’d raked the leaves. A song she’d mouthed the words to with a smile on her face. Now she just laughed and listened to the Stones.

_ I look inside myself and see my heart is black... _

_ Maybe then again I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts It’s not easy facin’ up, when your whole world is black _

She rolled down the window and flicked the butt of her cigarette out. The chilled night air hissed by like a bothered nest of vipers. The song crackled along, and she was still chuckling like some maniac.

... _ I could not foresee this thing happening to you _

“FUCK!!!!” she screamed at the windshield, long and loud, her mouth tasted like it was full of ash, her left cheek numbed by the night, no one there to hear her, no one to bother, except maybe the woodland animals lurking, waiting to cross the road, playing with Death each time.

* * *

She woke at the sound of the school bus pulling up at the corner, and the girl who played Mendelssohn next door hurrying downstairs, always running late. She'd been pulled from a dreamless sleep, the best kind. It didn’t take her long to get ready for work these days, knowing her clothes would be exchanged for scrubs and a mask would cover her face for most of the day. She ate a cup of yogurt while the coffee brewed and looked out the kitchen window to find that the wooly snow of the weekend had melted into a grey sludge, lining the streets and sidewalks.

Without anyone there to see her, she smiled a blissful, happy smile, closing her eyes for a moment. Mulder was back. He was alive and who cared if he was two hours away, he was  _ alive _ ! She wanted to yell it from the rooftop. She wanted everyone to know, she wanted to tell her neighbors, who knew her only as the quiet woman who lived in 4. Instead, she drank a quick cup of coffee and headed to work, an energy in her that she hadn’t felt in two years.

“Hey, Brian, what’ve we got?” she asked, pulling two medium sized latex-free gloves from the box above the scrub sink and snapping one on as the younger man picked up a clipboard from an empty gurney and read off the schedule. Brian was one of three dieners employed at the coroner’s center, and her favorite among them.

He squinted at the list. “On tap for today:a probable aneurysm, two heart attacks, liver failure in a twenty-two year old, and eighty-eight stab wounds.”

“Eight stab victims?” she balked. She could do four autopsies before the end of the day if she cut fifteen minutes off her lunch break, but she was already thinking about the sandwiches from Perly’s...

He held up a finger. “Twenty-six year old male found in Oregon Hill late Sunday night, stabbed eighty-eight times.” Brian looked at her, excitement in his eyes. “What’s it gonna be, Doc?”

“Let’s warm up with a heart attack and save the stab wounds for dessert,” she said, mentally calculating the amount of time each one would likely last. “Who’s my first date?” she asked, preparing to wheel the gurney up to the appropriate compartment in the morgue.

“We’ve got a forty-two year old man or a seventy-seven year old woman. Choice is yours,” he said, following her around the corner to where the bodies were kept in long, climate-controlled drawers.

“Oh, let’s start with him,” she said, and followed Brian to the third compartment from the right. She lined the gurney up and helped him lift the dark body bag onto it, then wheeled the man back to the autopsy bay. She unzipped the bag and looked down at the dead man, his mouth gaping open like Van Gogh painted it even as his eyes stayed shut. If the family wanted the body embalmed, or wanted to have an open-casket at the funeral, the mortician would sew the man’s mouth shut from the inside so that it didn’t look so frightening. They could put some makeup on him as well, to make him look more alive. It all depended on what the family wanted. But here, in this room, on this table, Daniel Woolf, a Caucasian male, forty-two, was wearing his death face, and it didn’t frighten her. She knew Death, they had been intimately acquainted for years. Brian held the man’s body up while she slid off the body bag, taking some remaining fluids down with it even though the body had already been drained, then put him back down. She grabbed a sturdy apron from the hook by the sink and tied it on over her scrubs, then leaned over the dead man. “Now, why did a forty-two year old man of average weight have a heart attack?”

She picked up her scalpel and poised it over the man’s sternum. “Ready?” Brian asked.

Knowing the initial cursory exam had already been performed by a diener early that morning, she nodded. Brian flipped on the dictaphone, and she began the Y-incision.

* * *

She leaned against the sink in her scrubs and made last notes on the report in neat blue ink while Brian cleaned the room, spraying the floor down, gathering everything that needed to be sanitized. She took off her mostly clean apron and draped it on Brian’s cart of materials to be washed. No time to change scrubs or shower, she had a meeting and a report to hand in upstairs before her lunch break.

“Hey, Dr. Scully, what’s your order?” Brian asked, looking up from his work as she headed to the door. She smiled.

“You’re buying?”

He nodded. “It’s Monday. Perly’s, right?”

“Get me that one with the hummus,” she said, forgetting the name of the sandwich. Someone’s last name. “And the soup of the day,” she added, truly hungry for the first time in what felt like months, “whatever it is.”

“You got it,” he said, and she rushed out the door with her notes.

They ate lunch in her office, all neatly organized files and a spotless desk. A small plant was trying to survive in its little pot by the window, a gift from her mother at Thanksgiving, which she’d been told it was low maintenance. Predictably, she’d already watered it too much in her attempt to nurture it. The window offered a view of the parking lot and the hospital, sprawled up at the top of the hill. Brian sat on a fold out chair across from her and dug into his Reuben while she unwrapped her sandwich, investigating whatever she’d ended up ordering. Toasted pumpernickel, a thick layer of hummus, then tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, and some shredded carrot thing, all dressed with some kind of delicious sauce.

“How was your weekend, Dr. Scully?” he asked, wiping some mustard off his lips with a paper napkin and reaching for a chip. Every Monday he asked her, and every Monday for the first six months she’d given a vague, similar answer of ' _ Not much'  _ . This was his first real job as a diener, right out of school, and she was one of his first hands-on teachers. After a while, she’d opened up more. Nothing personal, but she’d tell him about a book she’d read, or an interesting article she’d found in a medical journal. He knew she’d worked for the F.B.I, but figured out after a few tries that she clammed up whenever he brought up the subject.

She was still riding this morning’s high, the smile in her kitchen. She couldn’t help it, she smiled again. “I got to see a friend,” she said, “a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time.” There was no use going into specifics, and she didn’t want to scare away her best diener with a story about a dead man coming back to life.

“So, this  _ friend _ ...did he work at the F.B.I, too?” Brian asked through a mouthful sandwich. 

She nodded. “He did.”

Brian smiled but didn’t push her.

“What about your  _ friend _ ? Do anything fun this weekend?” she asked, mischief in her voice. 

Brian rolled his eyes. “I told you I got tickets to that film screening at The Byrd, right?”

She nodded, opening her soup and inhaling the French onion which she’d probably start now and finish for dinner.

“Well it was for Kieslowski’s trilogy, you know, ' _ Blue' _ , ' _ White' _ , and ' _ Red'' _ ? I got tickets for me and him, and then ‘ _ inspiration struck _ ’,” he held up his fingers in mock quotation marks, “and he just  _ had  _ to stay at home and finish his new project.”

“What’s the project?” she asked, knowing Brian’s boyfriend was an art student at VCU.

Brian shrugged. “He fills condoms with acrylic paint and then throws darts at the canvas, trying to

pop them. He thinks he’s being edgy. I think it's a waste of materials.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes we have to support people even if we’re not completely on board.”

He sighed. “I know, I’m just whining. The tickets were expensive, and it’s not like I make a fortune doing this.”

She tipped her head understandingly. “At least there’s job security,” she said. “Death is probably the most reliable thing next to illness.”

* * *

On the drive home she thought about that case in Wisconsin, or wherever, in April, when she’d gotten back to the motel late and unlocked the door to her room to find Mulder sprawled across the bed staring at the television.

“What’s wrong with your room?” she asked, tired. 

He didn’t look at her. “Game’s on. TV’s broken.”

She couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not, but she didn’t really care, and closed the door behind her, stepped out of her shoes, draped her coat on one of the two chairs, and walked to the bathroom, taking her earrings out and setting them down on the counter next to her toiletry case, safely away from rolling into the sink.

Back in the room she shucked her suit jacket and put it on the dresser, idly watching the game while unbuttoning her blouse. She folded it neatly and bent to put it back in her suitcase, knowing they’d be on the road in the morning. She grabbed a pair of pajamas and set them on the bed, then worked on the side zipper of her skirt.

“Suddenly something far more interesting is on display,” Mulder said, and she looked from the TV to him. She knew that voice. Now he was looking at her as she slipped the skirt off and folded it, standing in her bra and underwear. Currently she was fantasizing about a shower, pajamas, and a dark room. She looked at him wearily.

“Mulder, I’m not in the mood,” she sighed. “Plus, you know I don’t want us to sleep together while we’re on cases.”

“We slept together on the last case!” he argued, sitting up on the bed. “Come over here, Scully, let me help you with that,” he joked, holding out a hand as her own reached behind her to unclasp the bra.

“We slept in the same bed,” she clarified, “we didn’t have sex.”

“Yes we did!” he said, holding a hand out insistently. “Unless you don’t count shower sex.” 

She paused, fingers on her bra. “Oh.”

Mulder stood up and walked over to her, reaching behind her to unclasp her bra and remove it in a well-practiced move, then splay a hand over her back, pressing her up against him and leaning down to kiss her, his fingertips moving to whisper across the side of her left breast. After a moment she put a hand to his chest.

“I didn’t shower at the morgue,” she said, a bit breathless, but with a hint of victory in her voice. She  would win this round. “I smell like formaldehyde.”

“I don’t care,” Mulder said, pulling down to the bed, into his lap, pleased with her bare breasts, her skin slightly chilled to the touch. She crinkled her eyebrows.

“Mulder!” If she could barely stand driving in the car alone without taking a shower after a gruesome autopsy, she didn’t know how he could bear the smell of her. “Come on, let me take a shower.”

He started kissing her breasts, his hands on her ribcage, her waist. The TV announcer was predicting the final score. She sighed, acquiescing, and ran her hand through his hair, sinking further into his lap. Mulder was only wearing a pair of sweatpants, and she could already feel him hard beneath her. Jesus, why had she dropped thirty bucks on a new bra last week when the simple grey one she’d been wearing tonight did this to him? She supposed underwear didn’t really matter, anyway. In the end, that was the part everyone was most eager to get off.

She pushed him down on the bed and leaned down, her breasts brushing against his chest, and kissed his jaw, that part of his neck, by his ear, that she loved so much, grinding against him. Mulder moaned, his hands in her hair, and pulled her down closer, reaching with his other hand to pull down his sweatpants.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” he cried, rather suddenly, and she sat up, her chest flushed, the remnants of lipstick smudged around her mouth.

“What is it?” she asked, exhaling.

He grimaced. “Scully, you’ve got to shower. You smell disgusting.”

She laughed and leaned down again, purposefully putting her head, her hair, near his nose. “I thought you liked it,” she said, her voice husky, playful.

“I never said I  _ liked  _ it!” He pushed her off to the side so that she bounced a little on the bed. She sat up and laughed again, and he made a tortured expression.

“Seriously, get in there,” he said, gesturing to the bathroom. She got up and pulled off her underwear, tossing them into her suitcase.

“And take your time!” he called as she walked to the bathroom. She turned the shower on and grabbed her shampoo from her bag of toiletries. She wanted to smell like herself, not like some cheap complimentary soap.

When she’d finally scrubbed herself and thoroughly washed her hair she got out of the shower, combed her hair, and wrapped herself in one of the towels, going back to him naked. She was greeted by the multicolored TV projecting colors on his face, his eyes closed in sleep. With a smile, she went and switched off the TV, dropped the towel and slid into the bed, reached over to turn off the bedside lamp, and struggled to pull the sheets out from under him so she could burrow in. He made an indistinguishable sound in his sleep, then opened his eyes, finding her beside him, shivering slightly, her dark hair plastered to her neck like sea kelp.

“Mmh,” he said, pulling her close, smelling her wet head. He kissed it, and she rolled over, pulling the sheets down around her and exhaling, relaxed, when he curled up behind her. A large, warm hand snuck through the sheets to wrap around her, and she closed her eyes, perfectly content, and began to drift to sleep.

In the car she felt a sudden urge to cry, which surprised her. Not sob, not weep, but to cry with happiness. Surely now they could have that again, those moments which at the time seemed  forgettable, meaningless, but which she’d revisited for two years. Those were the moments that sustained her. Burnt pancakes, wet November leaves, Mulder trying to balance a spoon off his nose, making a hot water bottle, slow dancing to  _ Ain’t No Sunshine,  _ sharing trail mix on a mountain. Those weren’t the things authors wrote about to make up a love story. Those precious Nothing Days that had become everything to her, as precious as the gleam of dawn upon virgin snow.

At home she took a look at her mail and warmed up her soup, holding it near her face for a moment to try and thaw her cold nose. Just as she was sitting down to eat, the phone rang. It was embarrassing how quickly she reached it to answer.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Scully, it’s me,” his voice came over the line. The sound of her name on his tongue was as intimate to her as a sonnet.

She smiled, returning to the table, to her hot soup. “Hi.” She knew he could hear the smile in her voice.

“So, what did Dr. Dana Scully do today?”

She stirred her soup. “Autopsied a homicide victim who was stabbed eighty-eight times with four different knives.”

“Guess he didn’t have a sharpener on hand,” Mulder said, not missing a beat. “Where does he go now?”

She took a bite and covered her mouth for a moment, it was so hot. “Well now I’m just the pathologist. I do the dirty work, sign off, and then I’m pretty much done, unless they need me in court. Other than that, it’s up to the boys in blue.”

“Or maybe the boys in black,” he said. “You never know.”

“I don’t know anything else about the case. If it gets turned over to the F.B.I, nobody’s gonna let me know. What about you, Agent Mulder?”

“ _ Special  _ Agent Mulder, if you don’t mind,” he corrected, and she rolled her eyes. “Guess who’s gotta go through a crash course recap of basic training at Quantico this week.”

She laughed. “That should be fun.”

“I’ll be the old geezer out of breath on the course next to all those kids.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she said, placating him.

“Speaking of Quantico,” he began. She’d known this was coming. “Any thoughts?”

She stirred her soup again. Outside it was eggplant-dark, condensation on the edges of her kitchen window from the heat inside against the frosted pane. Some things were easier to say over the phone.

“Mulder, what’s going to happen if I quit my job and move back? Is it going to be like it was before?” Bob Dylan had sung it first -' _ You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way’.  _ “How could it?”

The sound of him clearing his throat. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Mulder, we wouldn’t be working together, for a start,” she said, stating the obvious. “There’s  no more X-Files for the time being. We’d need to find apartments, and if I’m at Quantico I don’t want to live in the city and make that commute every day.”

“I’d take the metro into the city. We could make it work,” he insisted. “I already found something. It’s small, but I think we could afford it. I mean, I could afford it.”

“Woah, woah, Mulder, you’re jumping the gun,” she interjected, then picked up on his choice of pronoun. She paused. “Did you say ‘ _ we _ ’? You mean, you want us to live together?”

A pause.  _ Had she said the wrong thing _ ? She felt the potential for disaster here was enormous, like a family picnicking on train tracks.

“If you want to, Scully. I told you, I meant what I said to your mom.”

She waited while he gathered his thoughts.

“I want to be with you. Not out of obligation, not out of guilt. Just because I was gone doesn’t mean I stopped loving you.” He took a breath. “Maybe you were right, maybe I do love you too much, but I can’t help it. I know that scares you. I’ll try to rein it in.”

She chuckled, a soft smile on her lips as she listened to his voice, warm as early autumn. “It doesn’t scare me,” she said. “Not anymore.”

Now she heard the smile in his voice, and it filled the silence like a speech. Then, “So just think about it, okay? And let me know.”

“I’ll let you know,” she promised. “Okay,” he said.

“Mulder?”

“Hmm?”

She stirred her soup again. “Thanks for calling.”

He chuckled. “While I’ve got you here, Scully, what are you wearing?” 

She smiled again. “An unamused expression.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“Good night, Mulder.”

“‘Night, Scully.”

The same feeling came over her that had passed through her in the car on the way home. A desire to cry, to laugh; that strange emotion, as elusive as the smell of primrose, between sadness and joy. She remembered it suddenly from that golden night in his bed, the first time she’d told him she loved him, emotions passing over her face like a sunset over a quiet landscape. That particular moment when everything had changed between them.  _ Love _ . Such a small word, like  _ blood _ . One filled your body, the other filled your soul. Without blood to pump, a human heart stops beating. But without love, it breaks. 


	9. Chapter 9

Two days passed, five bodies on her table, another snowfall that melted as soon as it landed on the weekend's dirty, frozen remnants -still pushed out of the way on streets and sidewalks, roads re- salted. Two phone calls from Mulder to tell her about training at Quantico, another from her mother to check in, to ask what she was going to do. And she still didn't know. Shouldn't she know? Wasn't love supposed trump reason? She had a good hand, two possible plays, and she didn't know which one to lay on the table.

It was like seeing him in that morgue, the same one she now worked in. _It had been Mulde_ r, and yet she hadn't wanted to say it out loud, because it couldn't be, it just couldn't be true. Stay in Richmond, telling herself it was better for her life to stay the way it was, or move to be with Mulder, and admit that she wanted to live a new life with him, even if change scared her?

Her lease was up in January, and she'd already spoken with the landlord about renewing it. At the end of her work day, waiting for Mulder to call, she started to chew on her nails, then stubbornly tore them away. She'd always hated that bad habit.

They could live together. After all, they'd always taken care of each other. She thought of that July, just before Independence Day.

* * *

The sound of the phone jolted her out of a dream, and she reached to the bedside table, hitting 'TALK' with her eyes closed and holding the phone to her ear in the dark.

"Scully."

"Scully?" Mulder's voice, sounding as though he hadn't yet slept and wasn't even tired. She opened one eye and looked at her alarm clock. 3:10AM.

"Mulder?"

"Tell me what the symptoms of appendicitis are," he said. She opened her eyes and sat up.

"Mulder, do you think you have appendicitis?" she asked.

He sighed. "Well, I don't know. My usual doctor isn't in town."

She stood up from the bed. They hadn't been able to get rooms close to each other because of the holiday, so that now his room was across the lot. "I'll be there in a minute, Mulder."

"Room seventeen," he reminded her. There was a click as he hung up.

She put down the phone and grabbed her room key from the bedside table, then headed outside, locking the door behind her. There was a slight chill in the air as she walked across the lot in her discarded heels and matching silk pajamas. When she reached his door, noticing the light was on in his room, she knocked twice, then turned the knob and found it unlocked.

The faint smell of vomit greeted her, as well as Mulder, who was standing by the bed in a t-shirt and his boxers, wearing an unhappy expression, a hand on the side of his throat. She brushed sleep off her face and shut the door behind her, wrinkling her nose. "Have you been throwing up?" she asked.

"Tastes like it," he responded.

She went toward him, rubbing her hands together to warm them. "Is this why you weren't hungry at dinner? Why didn't you say anything?" She put the back of her hand on his forehead and concentrated, then shrugged. "You don't feel warm. Where does it hurt?"

He lifted his shirt and pointed at the right side of his abdomen. "Don't jab me," he warned as her hand came closer. She applied a small amount of pressure, looking at his face, and watched his features, wincing at the same time.

"Well, I don't get to work with warm bodies that often, but, from what I can remember, this does look like appendicitis," she said, taking her hand away. "Can't be sure, though. Mulder, we have to get you to a hospital. Do you have a pair of sweatpants or something?" she stepped away and checked his suitcase, still open on the second bed. He moaned in discomfort as he pulled on his pair of discarded sweatpants that had been balled up at the end of the bed he'd been sleeping in.

"Why didn't you say something earlier?" she asked, looking for a pair of socks.  
"Felt like the flu," he explained. "Didn't want to cry wolf."  
She tossed him the pair of socks and said, "Put those on. I'll get the car and call the hospital."

She pretended to read seven different magazines in the waiting area on the ground floor of the hospital over the three hours she spent there, looking up at every white-coated doctor that came through the automated double doors that led to the surgical wing. Babies were born, a broken arm was set, and one man succumbed to a heart attack. She felt silly, worrying about an appendectomy procedure. Even in Nowhere, Nebraska, it was pretty difficult to screw up. In the emergency room he'd tried to convince the ER doctor to let her perform the surgery. The doctor, a middle aged woman with a no-nonsense attitude, took Scully in. She'd managed to dress in the suit she'd worn yesterday, a slightly wrinkled blouse, and her hair was slightly flat on one side from sleeping.

"She's a doctor," Mulder clarified.

Scully shook her head at the same time the ER doctor stood back from the bed. "She can go to the waiting with all the other wives who are 'doctors'," she said.

Scully ruffled Mulder's hair. "See you on the other side," she joked, raising her eyebrows as she walked behind the doctor to leave.

"Put in a good word for me!" Mulder called, then winked.

"Family of Fox Mulder?" a voice called, and she looked up at the sound. It wasn't the same ER doctor, but a younger brunette woman. Too bad about the nose. Scully put her magazine and stood up, crossing her arms across her chest and trying not to look worried.

"Yes?"

"I'm Dr. Levi. You're 'Scully'? Dana Scully?" the woman clarified.

She nodded. The doctor smiled. "He said to look for a pretty redhead." Suddenly her nose seemed less unfortunate. "Everything went well, we did it laparoscopically but had to administer general anesthesia. He looked a little squeamish at the idea of a local."

Scully nodded. "Can I see him?"

Dr. Levi smiled. "He just got out of recovery. Still a little groggy from the sedative. Won't stop talking about you."

She blushed slightly. "What floor?"

"Second floor, room twelve," the doctor said. "If everything checks out, he should be able to go home this afternoon."

"Thank you," Scully said, meaning it.

The door to Mulder's room was ajar, and when she opened it she found a nurse injecting what must have been a painkiller into his IV. She raised her eyebrows and smiled a small smile at Mulder. The nurse turned around and nodded.

"I've been hearing a lot about you," she informed her, not quite as amused as Dr. Levi had been.

"I see," Scully said, moving toward the bed, staying at the foot.

"You can go now, Annie," Mulder said, waving his hand slightly. Scully shot him a look, then turned to the nurse.

"I'm sorry," she apologized to a woman whose name tag read Nurse Marianne. "Thank you."

The nurse nodded curtly, and Scully sincerely hoped Mulder hadn't been rude. It didn't seem like him, but anesthesia did things to people. She had professed her undying love for an orthodontist after he had removed her wisdom teeth at the age of seventeen, according to her mother.

"No fluids yet," the nurse reminded, then left.

She moved to sit and the edge of the bed. "It hurt so bad, Scully," he said, patting her hand. She looked at him understandingly.

"Oh, I'm sure it did, Mulder," she placated, "especially under all that anesthesia."

"But I was, you know, really brave," he said, quite seriously.

"Of course you were," she said, trying not to laugh, remembering what the doctor had said, that he had been too squeamish for a local anesthetic, which would have prevented all these symptoms. "I hope you'll be brave enough to sit through our plane ride tomorrow morning once those painkillers start to wear off."

He sniffed and squeezed her hand. "Don't worry, Scully. I can do it."

She chuckled. "Okay, Mulder."

He looked at her and swung her hand around. "I probably won't remember anything I'm saying now tomorrow, will I?" he slurred.

She smiled. "No, probably not."

"Good," he said, a wonky smile on his face. "Can I be honest with you, Scully?"

She tipped her head good-naturedly.

He looked her directly in the eye for a moment, before looking a little dizzy. "You give the best blowjobs, Scully-"

"Mulder!" she cried in a whisper, shooting a glance at the closed door.

"I mean, a religious experience," he continued, slurring the end of 'experience'.

She turned back to him, fire in her eyes.

"And when you do that thing with your tongue..."

She slapped his cheek lightly, trying to smack some sense into him. "Mulder, shut up!" she hissed. He chuckled and ran his fingers over his cheek, shrugging.

"Scully, you gotta be honest with me," he said, looking at her seriously. "What did you want to be when you grew up? I mean, when you were a little girl."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever it takes to shut you up," she murmured. "I wasn't a very original little girl," she said. "Whatever Missy wanted to be, whatever Bill wanted to be, that's what I wanted to be."

"What did they want to be?" he pressed, wiping his nose, then holding her hand sloppily again. She glanced at his hand and grimaced, then looked back to his face.

"Lots of things. When she was in middle school, Missy wanted to make cupcakes for a living. She came up with all these horrible recipes and we'd make them and Mom would tell us off for using all the flour. I think Bill always wanted to go into the Navy. So, some days, I wanted to go into the Navy, too. Be like Ahab. It wasn't until I got to middle school, I think, that I really started thinking about what I wanted."

"Why didn't you want to be like Charlie?" Mulder asked curiously.

She smiled. "Charlie was always so unique. He was more like Melissa than I was. They were never afraid of being different, of standing out. Can you imagine me behaving like Missy, just going through life with so much feeling? And Charlie, who was never afraid of making a mistake? I wanted everything to be conventional and contained. Things that fell outside those strict guidelines made me run in the other direction when I was younger."

Mulder's eyes looked heavy. "For awhile I just wanted to be ordinary. I remember I had a picture I kept in my journal of this house in the country. I was going to live in it with my husband and my children, and we'd be happy forever."

"Can't always get what you want," Mulder sung. It hurt a little, but then she realized he meant it as a joke.

"Well, I started doing really well in school. I liked school, and that's when I realized I was different, in a way. I got good grades, I liked studying, and my physics teacher told me I should consider pursuing it at a university." She looked at her lap, smoothed a thumb over Mulder's hand. "My parents were so proud, especially Mom. I think Dad had known for awhile that I'd pursue academics. But Mom, she'd gotten her degree in Art History and Preservation from UVA and had a job all lined up. She dropped everything for Dad and never regretted her decision. She watched me tick off all the boxes growing up. Maybe she'd thought I'd do something less...drastic than going and studying physics, of all things. What about you?"

She looked up to find Mulder fast asleep. She patted his hand and slid hers away, standing up to squeeze some hand sanitizer into her palm and rub it in, then went to the chair by the other side of the bed. Her shoes came off easily, and she lifted her legs up to rest her feet on the bed, leaning back to relax until he woke up again.

* * *

Still waiting for the phone to ring, for Mulder to call, she went to the kitchen to make herself some tea. Yes, it could work. They could live together. She remembered New Years Eve, her apartment. The bottle of champagne he'd brought over. How she'd brushed hail off his coat and taken it off him without even asking, hanging it next to hers.

"Now the floor's gonna be all wet," she said, going to the kitchen for a rag. "Sorry," he said, taking his shoes off as well. "I brought champagne!"

She looked up at the bottle held victoriously in his hand. "Slim pickins, though. Guess people are loading up in case it all goes to hell."

She chuckled, leaning down to wipe at the floor as he moved out of the way. "What are you talking about?"

"Y2K, Scully," he said, going to the kitchen and putting the bottle in the refrigerator.

"Ah," she smirked, setting the dirty dishrag on the kitchen counter and folding her arms over her chest. "How are the Gunmen taking it?"

"They're prepared to go down like gentlemen," Mulder joked. He looked around the kitchen, obviously surprised at the very un-Scully-like disorder around him. Casserole pans were stacked together beside various pots that fit inside each other, three different sized strainers on top. Then came a dish towel laid out over a stretch of counter space covered in cutlery and cooking utensils. Canned foods in stacks, a section for two neglected, brown ferns. Beside a whole grocery aisle of various cleaning products and paper towels lay an abandoned pair of pink rubber gloves.

"Should I ask?"

She shrugged. "I meant to do it last weekend. It was one of my New Year's resolutions...last year."

"To turn your apartment inside out?" he asked.

"To deep clean the kitchen," she clarified. He laughed.

"What?" She tied on a black apron with a determination that suggested she was preparing for battle.

"Scully, most people tell themselves they're gonna lose ten pounds or stop smoking, and you decide to deep clean your kitchen."

She picked up the pink gloves. "Well, I didn't need to lose ten pounds or stop smoking. This shouldn't take long if you help with the silverware."

The look on his face made her crinkle her eyebrows. "If you think you've got a chance tonight, you better help me with this silverware. Go sit at the table."

He went to the table and rolled up his sleeves, and soon she brought over all the cutlery, some silver polish, and some paper towels. "I already washed everything, so all that's left to do is polish them. Don't put too much on the cloth, and don't rush through it all. I want everything spotless."

Unfortunately, considering she rarely had an opportunity to use the silver and one sugar pot she'd been gifted when she moved into the apartment, there wasn't much to do. Mulder took his time, probably waiting so he didn't have to help her clean anything else in the kitchen. She tackled the pots and pans, scrubbed the inside of the oven as best she could, and got out a step ladder to clean the inside of the cabinets. After an hour and a half it was 11:14PM and the counters were clear.

"What are you doing with the cans?" Mulder asked, watching her organize the cutlery and put it all in a freshly cleaned drawer. She glanced at the canned vegetables and soups which were now bagged.

"They're expired. I'm throwing them away."

He moved to one bag and took out a can of corn, turning it around to look for the expiration date. "Expired-exshmired, Scully, this is from January!"

An expression of horror crossed her face. "Mulder, that's old. Nobody's eating that."

"I'd eat it," he said, and she started to recognize the expression on his face. He was teasing her, and she fell for it an embarrassing amount of the time.

"Give me that," she said, and grabbed it out of his hand, putting it back in the bag.

In the apartment above hers they heard the pop of a champagne bottle, followed by delighted cheering. Mulder's eyes darted to the newly cleaned cabinets.

"Got any wine glasses in there?" He was already reaching into the refrigerator for the champagne.

She opened the cabinet. "That's champagne, Mulder. I don't have any champagne flutes." She sounded disappointed, but took two wine glasses out of the cabinet, looking at them a little sadly. Mulder smirked.

"Don't worry, Scully, I won't tell Miss Manners." He worked the wire around the cork. Leaning against the counter in the spotless kitchen, watching the concentration on his face, she felt a strange contentment. No monsters, no worries, just a holiday with good company.

Suddenly he succeeded in uncorking the champagne, but forgot to hold the bottle at an angle. Somehow, the cork flew into the air, bouncing off the ceiling. She moved to catch it at the same time that the fizzing sound of champagne hissed beside her, wine on the floor. She slipped in her bare feet, and was dimly aware of Mulder lunging to catch her, dropping the champagne bottle in the process, where it hit the ground at the same time they did and shattered. The wine spread into a puddle.

"My floor! I just mopped!" she cried, immediately sitting up. Mulder had a hand on his head. "Are you hurt?"

"Only my pride," he said, flicking wine off his hands. "Watch out for glass," he reminded as they stood up, gingerly walking out of the kitchen to get their shoes.

They cleaned up after the ill-fated attempt at a champagne celebration, after which she insisted on mopping again, then brought the wine glasses and a half-empty bottle of apple juice to the living room, in bare feet again. He poured, sat back on the couch as she went to look out the window. It hadn't snowed since Christmas, so that now the the sky was clear, speckled with stars through bare tree branches, impossible to count. A delicate moon, like a silver hand, cupped the night sky in its palm.

"What time is it?" she asked, turning back to him. He checked his watch.

"We've got five minutes," he said, eyebrows raised. He took a breath. "Any last words?"

She took a sip of juice. "No, I don't think so. You don't really believe in all that, do you? Besides, the year 2000 isn't the real beginning of the new millennium." She set her glass down and sat on the couch

"Yeah, yeah," he said with a wave, "but it's fun to joke about it all the same."

The empty wine glass went on the side table and he looked at his hands and flexed them, somehow still sticky from the champagne. Something about his profile then...she'd blame it on the alcohol if there had been any in her blood, but they were dead sober and she scooted nearer to him on the couch. The surprise on his face when she sat up a bit on her knees and kissed him, tilting his face up to hers like she was the sky. At that early point in their relationship she'd been letting him lead, giving as she good as she got, but often letting him make the first move. She felt a hand on her back, and took advantage of the balance it offered to swing a leg over and straddle him. The feel of his surprise in the rise of his eyebrows, the breath of air before she pulled him back, her tongue leading this dance.

His sticky hands caught in her hair a bit, and she took one down in hers, pulling away from his mouth and giving him a wicked look.

"Oh, don't do that thing where you-" she'd seen how he'd reacted the first time in his bed when she'd done it, and smiled, drawing his index finger up and licking the sweet traces of alcohol off his finger, then sucked it into her mouth, swirling her tongue around, laughter in her eyes at the tortured look on his face. She knew what he saw when she did that, and dropped his hand, where it fell naturally to the hem of her shirt. In those early months he'd almost always asked permission, but now he could ask with his eyes, and she nodded. The long sleeved pomegranate shirt, slightly damp on one side from wine, was peeled off her like she was a fruit at the same time she reached for his belt, working his fly open one-handed, reaching inside before he could take off her bra. He just pushed the cups down and gasped at the feel of her hand, the thin cool fingers wrapping around him.

It had all happened so quickly, and now she raised herself up again to make her own work easier, also allowing Mulder better access to her chest, where he licked and sucked, then simply lay back, out of breath, while she continued stroking him. She'd managed to pull his jeans down just enough and he was happy with whatever she was doing, however she was touching him. She glanced up as his mouth left her breast and he leaned back, that same wicked smile, and crawled forward to bend down and swirl her tongue near his ear.

A sudden explosion, and they jumped a little. Through the living room windows the sparkling rainbow wheels, fistfuls of fireworks flung into the sky, crackling like Pop-Rocks from the center of the city. Whooping and more champagne bottles opening in the apartment upstairs, and she pulled her hand out from his jeans, touching his forehead to hers for a moment as the fireworks continued, giggling, out of breath. He laughed as well, a little shakily, and she reached behind to take off her bra, ducking for a quick kiss, no tongue.

"Happy New Year," she said, her voice husky, already off the couch, dragging his jeans and boxers down further as she went.

"Yeah, whatever," he mumbled, and groaned when she knelt down and took him in her mouth. That same swirl of her tongue, the similar suction he'd felt before with his finger, only now she knew it was even more intense, two thousand times better. A hum in her throat that vibrated through her mouth, and she knew he was lost.

Now apartment windows, town house windows were opening, people shouting 'Happy New Year!' down to the midnight couples strolling below. The idea that someone across the street could see through the slit in the curtains where she'd pushed them aside earlier and watch her getting him off like this threw a shot of arousal through her, almost as much as her name falling sloppily off his tongue, fingers playing over the back of her head. She intensified her work for a few minutes, felt his hand tighten in her hair, then heard him,

"Scully, I'm gonna-"

She let him slip out of her mouth and crawled back up. "Die?" she asked, eyes dancing. "I think you just survived your millennium, Mulder."

He nodded, his throat dry. "You wanna move this party to the bedroom?" he asked, a little desperately, her breasts brushing against his chest. She nodded, smoothing her tongue over her lips. Tonight she'd shown him her own assertiveness, made sure he knew just how much power she could hold over him. The captivated look in his eyes when she took him to her bed and pushed him down, bringing his hands up to rest on her hips but doing the rest of the work herself until the end, when she gasped,

"Now, Mulder," and he pulled her down, hard. Again, again, until she finally crested and fell, taking him down with her.

* * *

Now the phone really did ring, bringing her out of her reverie. The water for her tea was close to boiling as well, so she quickly moved it off the burner, then went for the phone, touching her cheek with the back of her hand, feeling a flush there.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Scully," he said.

"Kick anybody's butt in training today, Mulder?" she asked, reaching into the cabinet and sorting through various boxes until she found some Chamomile. She tore the tea bag open with the help of her teeth, holding the phone to her ear.

He chuckled. "Not exactly, although I did get my course time down by a minute. Impressed?"

She poured hot water over the tea bag in one of Mulder's mugs that she'd taken when she'd moved. "Sure. Whatever strokes your male ego. I will remind you, however, that my record time was-"

"Youthful vigor doesn't count, Scully," he protested. "In fact, I'd like to see you out here trying to keep up."

"In your dreams," she said.

"Ah, in my dreams." His voice was wistful. "What'd ya see in the frozen food aisle today?"

She shrugged. "Lung cancer, liver failure in a lifelong alcoholic, nothing exciting. I have to be in court on Thursday, though, for a preliminary hearing on that stab victim."

"What time Thursday?"  
She thought back to the altered schedule. "Ten. I'll probably be there an hour. Why?"

"I thought I'd come down and see you," he said.

"Oh."

He cleared his throat. "Is that okay? Just for lunch, or dinner, or whatever you want."

She bit her lip. "Mulder, that sounds great, but I've got to be back at work right after the meeting. I'd have about fifteen minutes for lunch, and then depending on how many autopsies are left..."

"No, I get it," he said, "busy schedule. I guess I'm not used to that yet."

"I'm sorry." And she was. She wanted to see him. If she could admit it, she was desperate to see him. The thought of hearing his voice in the evening carried her through each day, a burst of energy that burned strong until the moment the phone rang in the apartment. Picking it up, hearing him talk, was the most comforting sound on Earth to her now. Rich and vibrant, like warm honey melting in your mouth.

"Listen, Scully," he started, "Ginny got me the name of that real estate agent, she's married to a violin player in the orchestra."

"Uh-huh."

"She's shown me some places, and I think there's one you'd really like." She closed her eyes for a moment, tensing, but he kept talking. "I know you're still making your decision, and I respect that, but I think you'd really like this place. You could come up on Saturday," he suggested. "We could go together."

She opened her eyes and leaned against the counter, took a sip of her tea. "Tell me about it. The apartment."

"Well, it's a house," he said.

"A house! Why are you looking at houses?!" she exclaimed, surprised.

"Calm down, Scully, it's small. It's tiny. It's basically an apartment," he placated, increasingly desperate, and his voice made her laugh. She knew she had overreacted. "It's got a big yard, and there's trees."

"It's not in town? Not a development, a suburb?"

"Blehck. I can't live in a house with walls that wouldn't crush Buster Keaton," he said, distastefully.

She raised an eyebrow. So, he wanted a sturdy house. "I didn't know you wanted a yard. Or trees."

"It's rustic. It even has a wood-burning stove," he added. "Perfect for s'mores." Immediately, she pictured a log cabin in the middle of the woods with no civilization for miles.

"Tell me it's at least heated," she said, "because you're not going to find me out there chopping those precious trees down in the dead of winter."

Silence from the other end.

"Mulder, please define 'rustic'," she pushed.

"It's not the only one the realtor brought up. There's another one, a town house, it's a little closer to D.C than Quantico, but it looked nice. And there's a whole list of ones we can look at." He tried to be diplomatic. "But just tell me you'll look at the one with the wood-burning stove."

She took another sip of tea. "You said Saturday?"

"Saturday," he confirmed. "I can come pick you up if you want," he said, following swiftly with, "so you don't have to drive back if it gets late."

"Okay, sounds good. Hey, with whose car?"

She heard a resigned sigh from the other end. "When my mother died I inherited some money."

It wasn't her business to ask how much, although she wanted to. If he could afford a car, and was thinking of a house...

"Not a convertible, right? You know how I feel about those," she said, knowing he probably wouldn't have, but checking just in case. You never know what someone might do with a sudden chunk of money. She'd gone on long spiels as they'd passed convertibles throughout the years, annoyed at the complete disregard for safety.

"Not a convertible," he assured her. "Scully, I'd ask if you wanted to watch Badlands at nine, but I saw you didn't have a TV anymore."

She smiled at the thought. They used to do that, in their respective apartments. Call the other to suggest a movie, talk a little, then hang up. She never knew if he actually watched the movie after telling her it was on, but she liked to think he did. She liked the idea of them watching together, jumping, or not, when Marion was stabbed in Psycho; grimacing, or not, at the sight of the horse's head under the sheets in The Godfather.

"Nope, no more TV," she said, and wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was. What if she was Badland's redheaded Holly and he was the dangerous Kit? Him going off and doing something mad, and her turning it over in her head, wondering what on Earth would make him do such a thing, yet following him anyway. Driving across the country in a car, leaving death in their wake. Scully couldn't remember Holly's words exactly, but they would come to her years later.

' _It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? What's he doing right this minute? Is he thinking about me now, by some coincidence, even though he doesn't know me? Does it show on his face? For days afterwards I lived in dread. Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, and this never happened_.'

And then what did he say? What did Kit say?

' _Nobody's coming out of this thing happy, especially not us. I can't deny we've had fun, though_.'

"Well, I guess I'll be watching without you," he said, his voice light, like he was joking. She remembered Martin Sheen pouring the gasoline over a piano, faking a suicide.

"Mulder, wait," she interjected.

"What?"

"Don't," she said, "don't watch it. Talk to me. Tell me about something."

He chuckled, and she imagined him relaxing back into his couch, even though his couch was here, with her. But she could imagine him. She could time travel them back two years. God, he'd love that if he knew. So, there he was, sitting on his couch, phone to his ear. He'd flip off the TV, and she'd settle back into her bed and listen to him.

"About what?" he asked, amused, but she could hear it there, a flavoring in his voice. He was remembering, too. Those Nothing Days, maybe he had them too, in that safe house near Texas. Maybe he'd thought of her, wanted her voice in his ear.

"Tell me what you wanted to be when you grew up, when you were a little boy," she said, going to her bedroom with the cordless phone. "Tell me something happy."

"Okay," he said. And there it was! She heard it! The noise he made as he leaned back wherever he was, preparing to tell her a story. She got into bed and curled into the covers, setting her tea aside.

Mulder started talking, and she listened, his voice and story became a song only she knew the words to; there were low notes, high notes, and notes that hovered in the middle. She asked questions, like a choir searching for an answer from the soloist, and he supplied answers. He told her things he'd thought as a boy, foolish things he'd done in college, and she listened. They were a boy and a girl in a treehouse they made themselves, telling secrets, nowhere to go, nowhere to be, alone together in the Badlands. She glanced at the picture of them in the birch frame beside her bed, together and happy without even trying to be, her soapy hands, his open mouth as he concentrated on balancing the spoon.

"Mulder," she interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

A pause. "I love you, too, Scully."


	10. Chapter 10

It was amazing what a year could do, she thought on Saturday morning as she got ready for Mulder to come pick her up. Three hundred and sixty-five days, and they’d managed to fill a good number of them together, either at work or outside of it. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Would he notice that she’d cut her hair? Not as short as before, but significantly shorter than it had been last week. Styled with a blow dryer, the red shone bright against her dark grey sweater. She’d gone and bought a new tube of the lipstick she’d worn on her birthday at the Kennedy Center, her favorite color, and wore it subtly, just a smudge mixed with her lip balm. At the checkout line she’d realized it was also the color she’d been putting on right before he said he was going away for the weekend two years ago. She wore it for the good memory, not the bad one.

It was equally amazing how much one year could change someone. November 1998, the first Thanksgiving he’d spent with her family, when he’d met her brother and Ginny. The invitation had come from her mother, and she’d conveyed the message casually in their office on Tuesday of that week. The glad expression on his face that day, no fumbling excuse to get out of the holiday. Had she expected that of him? She’d found herself suddenly filled with a pleasant warmth knowing he would be there with her.

The November night when things had really changed. It had been fluttering in the air like lost moths, this feeling between them, looking for light to guide them. She’d known it would happen eventually. If it didn’t, and soon, what were all those looks about? His eyes hovering on her lips sometimes while she spoke, she’d even caught him glancing at her chest as she leaned beside him to look at a piece of evidence last week. There had been this static energy between them for months now. Sometimes she thought it would happen, that he’d try to kiss her again, during a quiet moment, or maybe in a motel room as they talked through a case. But no, he always got up and left, or she did. She wondered how much longer this would go on before one of them broke, or if it would fester into a constant presence in their relationship, a pebble in their shoes they were too lazy to shake out.

The traditional meal now finished, everyone was taking a pause after clearing the table to let dinner settle before digging into dessert. Charlie had sat down at the piano, a little Tommy on his lap, playing Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood, which sounded exactly like the name described. A child sleeping, a child playing, a child laughing. She watched them for a minute after helping bring the dishes in from the dining room to the kitchen. Ginny was swaying slightly with a hand on baby Sophie’s back, rocking her to sleep.

Dana looked around. “Where’s Mulder?”

Her mother looked up from the dishes she was loading into the dishwasher. “I think I saw him go out to the porch.”

Dana surveyed the kitchen counters, all the dishes and pots and pans. “Do you mind if I-”

“Go ahead, honey,” her mother said, shooing her out.

She went down the hallway, not far from the kitchen, to the white door, opening it, then the screen door after that. In a green sweater and dark jeans, the late-autumn air chilled her upon contact. He was sitting on the cushioned sofa, wicker chairs pulled safely out of the rain, which had dampened the edges of the porch, the wood shone in the darkness. The light was broken, so that the porch was lit only by the holiday brightness flowing in from the house, and the hall light, which she’d flipped on as she walked through. He glanced up when she appeared, glad to see her, but there was a certain melancholy there.

“Mulder? What is it?” she asked, coming to sit beside him, arms wrapped around herself. He looked at her, confused by the question.

“Nothing.”

“Are you sorry you came?” she asked. “It’s probably hard jumping into a crowd of loud Scullys all in one evening.”

He shook his head. “No, they’re great. Really great. I can’t believe Charlie and Bill were cut from the same cloth.”

She smiled. “My parents ended up with a nice patchwork quilt of children. I’m the boring one that abides by the law and remembers to get yearly physicals.”

He chuckled. “I don’t know how staunchly you abide by the law, Scully.”

“Not with you around,” she quipped.

He leaned forward, eyes on his hands, turning them over, elbows on his knees, then looked back at her. “I guess I’ve just never really had a family,” he confessed. “Not like this, at least.”

She leaned back and brought one leg up, folding it in front of her, listening.

“I mean, I can’t remember us even having a Thanksgiving after Samantha...after she was abducted. And even before then it’s not like we had family pouring in from out of town.”

She wrinkled her eyebrows. “Lots of people don’t necessarily make up a family, Mulder. Nor does blood.”

His sadness lifted, and he sat up. “I know that. It’s weird, I never thought I was missing out on anything during the holidays. And now I’m seeing a family, all together. Makes ya soft.”

She smiled and put a hand on his shoulder, circling comfortingly. “You’ll always be welcome in mine,” she assured him.

He looked at her then, his eyes full of some long buried emotion he had clearly been trying to whorl away. It was the same look she’d seen in the hall of his apartment, and she felt the same nervous fluttering, like an eyelid’s twitch, low in her belly. The sound of the rain on the roof, hissing down onto the yard, the faint piano, seemed to sheath anything that happened here in a secret gauze. Her foot, which she’d had perched on the couch, slid to the floor, but her eyes didn’t leave his. She wondered what he saw in them, what secret emotion was now revealing itself across her own features.

There was far less hesitation than there had been outside his apartment, when her heart had been cartwheeling in her chest as she’d been turning questions over in her head - _Yes? No? Yes? No?_ This time he only cupped her cheek as an indicator, and although a slight swirl of worry spun in her she opened her mouth to him within seconds, her eyes closing at the same time.

In that instant, she knew why they’d never kissed before. If his mouth, his tongue, were the only food left on the planet it would be enough. From the way he was kissing her now, changing the angle, she knew he felt the same. Part of her was shocked, realizing that she would let him do anything, right there in the half-light on her mother’s porch. For a long while she hadn’t thought of him at all that way, and when she began to recognize a growing love she’d considered him out of reach, but impossibly, unbelievably, here he was, his other hand on her neck, drinking her in.

Laughter, suddenly, from inside, and she pulled away from him a little, eyes darting to the hallway, as if expecting someone to be there, watching them, mocking two adults who’d loved each other for years and were only now acting on it. Mulder brought her back, and she sighed a little into his warm mouth, relaxing into a closer embrace, his hand at the nape of her neck. Now he stroked a hand along her side, and she reached down to find his hand and lead it to her breast. It had been such a long time coming, why shouldn’t he steal second while already at first? The feel of his hand there while he momentarily broke away from her mouth warmed her from her toes to her scalp. She breathed out a laugh and kissed him again, now her own fingers playing in his hair, wondering if they weren’t at her mother’s house would he be taking her to bed tonight. Is that what they’d do? Drive back after dessert and jump into bed together?

“Where’s Aunt Dana?” a small voice was asking from down the hall, near the kitchen. She broke apart from Mulder and touched her forehead to his for a moment, like he was her good horse. He sat back and looked at her, perhaps uncertain of her reaction now that things had really truly changed. No interruption, insect or human. No elevated alcohol levels to blame. Just spiced cider on their tongues and an invitation to join her family, a kiss to seal the deal. She looked him in the eyes and smiled gently. A strange sensation then, as though someone had poured a warm liquid over her head. Like she was a plant that had just been watered.

“Aunt Dana! Mulder! Time for pie!” Tommy called, and rushed back to the kitchen. She stood and held out her hand, taking Mulder’s and squeezing it, her calm expression putting him at ease.

“Wait,” she said, and he stopped midway as she led him inside. She wet her index finger and raised her hand, erasing some of her lipstick from his mouth. Walking down the hall she smoothed her hair and led them into the kitchen. His hand in hers loosened, knowing that she craved privacy in almost everything, but she kept it in hers and brought him to the table to sit next to her, then let it go to stand and help her sister-in-law serve pumpkin pie and carrot cake.

And the next year’s Thanksgiving, the day he’d apparently asked her mother if he could marry her thirty-five year old daughter. She remembered they’d arrived early, having done nothing that morning except drink coffee and watch over a simmering cranberry sauce she’d volunteered to provide. None of the underlying stress she’d felt last Thanksgiving, bringing him to meet her family when they weren’t even a couple. Even Christmas had been a little stressful, knowing Bill would be there. That day, too, had ended well. Now there was no awkwardness when Maggie opened the door, greeted them quickly, then pulled Mulder into the kitchen so he could get the large, shallow roasting pan from the top shelf because she didn’t want to get out the step-stool.

“Did you bring the cranberry sauce?” she heard her mom ask while she hung up their coats and lifted the dish of cranberry sauce out of the brown bag they’d brought it over in.

“Uh, yeah,” Mulder was saying, “I think Dana’s got it.” Her ears twitched at the odd sound of her first name on his lips.

“Dana?” her mother called, coming out of the kitchen as she walked in, gesturing at the sauce.

“I used Grandma’s recipe, but who knows if it’s any good,” she said, setting it on the counter. Mulder brought down the roasting pan and handed it to Maggie.

“It’s good,” he assured her.

Her mother soon had them on separate tasks in the kitchen, everything moving like clockwork -she’d supervised this holiday so many times. When Charlie and Ginny arrived Maggie set their gaggle of children down in the living room to watch the parade and stay out of the kitchen. One of them would wander in occasionally, to several cries of 'don’t touch the stove!', asking when the meal would be ready.

When her mother enlisted Charlie’s help in setting the table Mulder moved to watch Scully mash the softened potatoes with a fork, adding butter and cream as needed.

“Doesn’t she have one of those fancy mixer things?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Tastes better this way.” She put her finger in the mashed potatoes and held it out to him, and he sampled it.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad!?” she’d exclaimed, mock-wounded. “Says the man who can’t cook an egg. What are you doing?”

“I am doing something called ‘snapping’ green beans, apparently,” he said, stepping back so she could look at the string beans he was working with. He’d made a complete mess, opening them down the middle like trying to shell peas. She laughed, covering her mouth in amusement. “What?”

Still laughing, she leaned up and kissed his cheek quickly through a smile. “Let me show you again.” After a short lesson she went back to the mashed potatoes. Ginny, on the other side of the kitchen island sitting on a stool, began making kissy faces at her sister-in-law, teasing her like they had as girls.

Cleaning up after the meal, after talking about the kids, the orchestra, work, Ginny circled the conversation back to Mulder.

“You seem really happy,” she said sincerely, loading plates neatly into the dishwasher. “You and Mulder.”

Dana turned the words in her head while she wiped a soapy sponge around a glass at the sink. “I am,” she said softly. She glanced over to the living room, where Mulder was talking casually with her mother, Charlie had gone to change the baby. “We are.”

“Is it hard, working with him?”  
Dana looked at her sister-in-law, surprised. “You and Charlie work together.”

Ginny shrugged. “We don’t talk that much, though. The conductor talks, we listen. If I’m talking, it’s with the strings. Mostly we talk before work and after. You and Mulder are partners, right? It’s just you two all day?”

She nodded. “I guess so. When we’re out on cases sometimes we have to put everything aside and just focus on the work.” She set the glass aside to dry. “We both had to get used to that.”

“You guys ever fight?” Ginny asked.

“We duel,” she joked. “Why? Do you and Charlie fight?”

Ginny shrugged, closing the dishwasher and leaning over to take a spare sponge from beside the sink, wiping the counters. “Sure. When I forget he’s going out of town and realize I don’t have a sitter. When Charlie forgets I’m going out of town and I come home to find out the kids have been bathed twice in five days. Took him two pregnancies before he realized he couldn’t play Chopin at home without me bursting into tears and yelling at him. I say fighting’s healthy.”

“You and Charlie have been together since you were fifteen, though. What else could there possibly be to fight about?” she joked.

Ginny looked up at her, puzzled. “What’s up, Dana? Why are you avoiding the question?”

“Question?”

“You tell me you and Mulder ‘duel’, then ask about my relationship with your brother,” Ginny clarified. “Care to elaborate?”

“It’s part of our job,” she explained. “Partnerships are formed for the express purpose of maintaining balance when handling cases. Mulder and I were originally partnered so that I could...debunk his work -the X-Files.”

Ginny raised her eyebrows.

“They told me he was a loose canon, this guy chasing after aliens. And I was a scientist.” She looked at Ginny seriously. “I think the F.B.I thought by partnering me with Mulder they’d be rid of the X- Files within months. I don’t think they ever expected us to work well together. And we do work well together, Ginny, but it’s hard. It’s hard to love him the minute work ends, to forget I’ve been disagreeing with him all day.”

“Nobody said loving someone was an easy job,” her sister-in-law said. “It’s not for the faint of heart.”

* * *

The sound of the buzzer, and she walked out of the bathroom to go to the door, pressing the intercom.

“Mulder?”

“Yep,” he answered. A thrill at the sound of his voice, even muffled by the poor intercom system. She rolled her eyes at her own reaction, then pressed the button.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she said, then reached for her navy coat, shrugging into it, stepping into her ankle boots. Whatever he’d meant by ‘rustic’ , she hoped it wouldn’t involve ruining the only pair of boots that were stylish yet still kept her feet warm. She grabbed a scarf as an afterthought, opened the door to her apartment, stepped into the hallway, locked the door, and went downstairs to meet him.

Mulder was on the front walk shading his eyes, looking up at the sky when she closed the main door behind her.

“See anything up there worth investigating?” she asked, going to join him. He turned and looked at her, and she knew from his eyes he’d seen the difference in her hair. She hadn’t done it for him, but his reaction was exactly what she’d wanted.

“No, I, uh, was wondering if it was gonna rain,” he stammered, caught off guard by her appearance.

She squinted up at the white clouds. “Doesn’t look like it. Maybe snow.”

They went to the car, which was simple and grey, and she sat down in the passenger seat. She’d never been in a car this clean with him. It was odd, and slightly amusing, although she said nothing. Mulder shut the door behind him and looked over at her.

“Appointment for the first place is at eleven. Do you want to get something to eat first, or suffer a bit and eat after?”

She looked at the time, not even nine. Getting up this early on a Saturday hadn’t been a welcome idea, but it was worth it to see him now.

“Let’s drive up, then get something. We can go to that place on Beverley Street that serves brunch,” she suggested diplomatically.

He nodded. “Sounds like a plan. They have those waffles, right?”

“Belgian waffles,” she confirmed. “Yes.”

After their late breakfast she and Mulder got back into the car and he drove them out of Washington and down into Fairfax county. He told her stories about his week at Quantico, making her laugh at his exaggerated descriptions of his own shortcomings. That in turn made her think of her own experience, and they started to compare stories, finding instructors they’d both had, discovering that the same inside jokes existed in both their classes.

“Now, Mulder, where are we going?” she asked suddenly, noticing that the rate of busy intersections was declining, and fast food chains had all but disappeared. They’d passed a couple developments in the last thirty miles, but now the view consisted primarily of fields and large stretches of farmland.

He held up a hand patiently. “You’ll see. We’re almost there.”

Sure enough, after passing a small town, he put on the right blinker and she looked up from the dashboard, her eyes darting to the side where he was turning onto a gravel road. The melted snow of this week had caused the bank of forest growth on either side of the road to melt into the loose gravel, and she looked in the side mirror to see that the wheels of Mulder’s new car were now muddy.

“Mulder...” she warned as they drove on. After another minute the car emerged from the woodsy area and continued on down the road where a small farmhouse appeared on the edge of a field, dark wood fencing dividing land off all around. Not far behind the house was a tree line, the edge of a forest, the trees all but bare now. Behind it all the mountains rose, rolling blue. Isoprene. “Mulder, no,” she said, shaking her head. The road forked off and continued to the right, but they turned left.

He darted a quick look at her. “Just wait until you see the inside,” he pleaded. Ahead of them in the gravel driveway, in front of the porch, a blue car was parked. She bit the inside of her cheek.

They parked and got out at the same time as the realtor. Scully tied her coat more tightly around her, already reaching for her gloves in her purse as a wind rippled through the untended field and across her.

“Hi!” the woman said. She looked out of place here, dressed very professionally, wearing shoes that did nothing to keep her feet warm. “I’m Emily Webb,” she said, holding out her hand to Scully. The woman’s first name made something tighten in her chest, but she shook the blonde woman’s hand politely.

“Dana Scully."

“You’d have to be, with your hair,” Emily joked, and Scully smiled. “Well, my husband and Ginny are in the string section together, and we’ve been to a few of their parties. She gave Mr. Mulder my number and together we came up with a few ideas.” She shivered in the cold. “Should we go inside?”

They nodded, and followed her up onto the porch, and to the front door. Scully glanced around, imagining an old man wearing overalls sitting on the porch with his Farmer’s Almanac and a pipe, impatiently awaiting the harvest season. It was all wood, the outside painted white and needing another coat.

“There we go,” Emily said, unlocking the door with a glass pane and ushering them inside. Scully went first, her face dubious as she turned to Mulder. He smiled. “Now, it’s been redone within the past five years, so the features are a little more modern. An open kitchen and living room, new tiling in the kitchen, and the bathroom upstairs has also been renovated. I’ll let you take a look around.”

“Thanks,” Scully said, and explored the downstairs. The woodwork looked to be made of maple, and the walls were clean and painted cream. A small entryway with a closet and half-bathroom led into a large, open space with wood floors, two windows to the left side, which seemed to be the living room area, and two others on the right, which was the open kitchen, painted a warm yellow. There was no evidence of the wall that evidently had separated these two rooms before. Mulder touched her elbow and pointed, and she took in the wood burning stove he’d been so excited about.

It was black, relatively large, and sat on the far wall where a real fireplace might once have stood, a hole in the wall where the chimney component crawled in and upwards.

“Is there central heating?” she asked the realtor. “Besides the stove?”

The blonde woman shook her head. “No, not right now. The previous owners installed that themselves and found that heating wasn’t necessary.”

Scully turned and raised her eyebrow at Mulder skeptically, then moved to the kitchen. There wasn’t much to say about it, except for the blue and white intricate tiling on the wall between the counters and cabinets, and a 1950s-era refrigerator. Opening it revealed, however, that it was completely modernized, the vintage look preserved only on the exterior. The yellow walls on the side of the kitchen weren't garish and projected a certain unintentional yet genuine cheeriness. Scully looked out the window and saw another farmhouse a field away.

“A family called the Fraysers live there,” Emily supplied. “They have a dairy farm and own most of the land. Usually the cows are out grazing.”

“How much of the land comes with the house?” Scully asked curiously.  
“The field it’s located in, which is fenced off from the others. Almost three acres,” Emily said. Scully turned to Mulder, mouthed ‘three acres?!’.

“I know it’s a lot,” Emily said, “but if you don’t want to use the land you can always try and sell some to the farmer. I’ve sold two other homes like this, one family just mowed the land and let the kids play in it, the others ended up selling most of it. Up to you, really.”

Mulder led her up a staircase that creaked and to the upper floor. Three similarly sized bedrooms off one side of the hallway and a bathroom on the other. Scully peeked inside and saw a clawfoot bathtub with a shower attachment.

“This way we could both have an office, if you want, or we could share and keep one guest bedroom,” he suggested as she checked each bedroom, appreciating the view from each window. She tried to imagine her furniture here, then found herself imagining the previous owners. Who had they been, why had they moved?

Because of the downstairs renovations and the modest size of each bedroom, the house did have a cozy feel to it, making his 'it's small' claims valid enough. Very simple, yet the remaining antiques did add a certain charm. They went back downstairs and she took one last look around. He hadn’t been wrong, she did like it. In theory, it would be a nice place to live. But not for them.

They all went back to the front porch and Scully linked her arm through Mulder's. He looked down at her. “No?”

She shook her head, her eyes apologetic. Turning to the realtor, she smiled. “Thank you so much for coming out here for us.”

Emily nodded. “Sure. There’s another listing, though, that Mulder thought you’d want to look at. Are you still interested in seeing that one?”

“The townhouse apartment thing,” Mulder supplied, when Scully looked at him in confusion.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, how far away is it?”

“Only about twenty minutes,” Emily said. “They’re actually having an open house that ends at three, so it would be a good time to go and see it.”

Scully nodded. “Okay, sure, let’s go.”

They got back on the road and Mulder didn’t linger or brood, as he sometimes did, over the fact that she’d disagreed with him. Instead, he moved on. “So, this other place is more downtown. It would be further from Quantico, but it’s a great neighborhood, there’s a park nearby...” He kept on going.

Sometimes she’d liked those nights when he’d called to tell her what movie was on, but then they’d hang up, and she could still enjoy her own space. Sometimes a weekend alone was just what she needed. Go for a run, do errands no couple wanted to do together, like grocery shopping -arguing over brands of cereal, what produce needed to be organic, crunchy or smooth peanut butter. Sometimes she’d just read a book cover to cover with nothing and no one to distract her. One Saturday she’d retouched the cream-colored trim in her bedroom just because she had the time and energy. That’s why she wasn’t good at living with people. Sharing things, making decisions together about so much...It was easier to live alone.

Part of her was glad they’d had the space of a week between his return and now, with only their nightly phone calls to keep them tethered together. It had also helped her keep her emotions in check, catching herself before she got too swoony over him being back, reminding herself again that he was back. Mulder. Not necessarily the faultless image of him she’d tried to conjure during the two years she’d been without him. This Mulder wasn’t perfect. Sometimes he would say the wrong things, or piss her off, and that was okay. He was back. All the parts of him she loved, and some parts that were harder to. This week had helped her see that.

He pointed out the park as they passed it, and soon after they found a spot two cars behind Emily’s in front of a bright, clean set of townhouses. Balloons had been tied on the FOR RENT sign stuck in the small, neat front yard, and a holiday wreath hung on the door. As she got out of the car she watched an attractive couple come out of the house, waving back to the man who had opened the door. Emily walked over and greeted the man familiarly, while Mulder came around to the passenger side to join Scully.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Is it the one? Are we gonna live here and be happy forever?” he joked, waggling his eyebrows. She paused, looking at him with a sudden realization.

“You remember what I told you,” she said, surprised. “In the hospital. About that picture I had when I was a kid.”

His eyes jumped back to the townhouse, but she put a hand on his arm. “Mulder, I don’t want to see any other places,” she admitted.

“What? But you haven’t even seen what it looks like inside!” he said, gesturing to the perfect house with all the perfect couples inside looking around.

“Mulder, you heard me under all those drugs when I said I’d wanted a house in the country,” she insisted, patting his arm, “didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “Nah, I just thought you’d get a kick out of the wood burning stove,” he said. She could always tell when he was lying.

“Mulder,” she said seriously, “I want us to live there. That’s the house I want.”  
He looked down at her. “What? Scully, you hated it, it was written all over your face.”

She shook her head. “But you loved it. It was written all over your face. You found a house in the country and you took me there and showed me.” She heard the noise of another couple leaving, the realtor telling them to have a nice rest of their Saturday. “Let’s live there. I want a house with a creaky staircase and a wood burning stove and a ton of land that I have no idea what to do with. And cows. I want the outside to smell like cows,” she joked. “All the time.”

He chuckled, then tipped his head. “You should really think it through, though. We have time. I’ll be working in D.C and a big move, commuting to Richmond and back every day -”

She shook her head and put her hand on his shoulder. “I handed in my notice yesterday and called Quantico. I have a meeting there on Wednesday.”

“What?” he asked. “You’re quitting?”  
She nodded. “I gave my two weeks. The lease to the apartment is up in January.”

He was looking at her like a child just told they were getting a puppy. “I know it’s all very fast, and we really don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” she continued, rambling. “I mean, you came home a week ago and now you’re talking about getting a house, maybe I shouldn’t have quit without talking to you first.”

He held her shoulders, calming her as he recognized a rising anxiety. “Scully, it is fast, but who cares?” His next words were very quiet, so only she could hear them. “We’ve lost so much time already.”

She wrapped her arms around him, felt his hand on her back. After a moment she stepped back, her cheeks pink at the rush of emotion that had just passed between them. Poor Emily was probably still standing in the cold waiting for them to come up from the car.

Nothing in this world was perfect. She hadn’t ever thought of quitting her job in Richmond before Mulder returned. She liked it, enjoyed the people she worked with, the routine of it all. She liked her apartment, even if the radiator was a little faulty. Before, if he’d never died, if he’d come home after two days and they’d continued on, if he’d proposed to her at Christmas and she’d said yes they would be living together by now, probably for two years. There were too many woulds and ifs in that sentence for her liking, but there was truth in it. If she knew herself, and she’d been prepared to, for all intents and purposes, spend the rest of her life with Mulder two years ago, it was certainly something she could do now.

So, they’d live together. In that cold little farmhouse at the end of a muddy road, surrounded by cows and fields and forest. She’d make him install central heating before they moved in -the stove wouldn’t cut it, but now she felt like little Susan Walker, the Santa-skeptic. Like Santa Claus had given her the house she’d always wanted, making her realize he'd been telling the truth all along.

Mulder stepped away from her and toward the house, presumably to find Emily, and she watched him go. Next door to the right a station wagon pulled up, double parking on the relatively quiet street. A teenager and a college student wearing a University of Maryland sweatshirt got out of the car and shut their doors, running around the back and opening the trunk door.

“You’re gonna tear all the branches off!” the teenager whined as his sister reached for the tree’s thin trunk and began pulling it out of the back of the car.

“Shut up and help me, then, idiot!” she snapped, struggling with the cumbersome parked cars beside them as they tried to maneuver their Christmas tree.

“Kids, stop yelling at each other!” their father’s voice came from the driver's seat, watching them through the rearview mirror.

It was now the fifteenth of December, the anniversary of Mulder’s death was three days away. She didn’t want to think about where she’d be today if he hadn’t come back. Here were families putting up their decorations, here the world was moving along and she was part of it, not stuck in the tick-deep rut of his death. Now the boy and girl were coming up the sidewalk from between the parked cars, carrying the tree between them. The girl saw her and smiled.

“Happy Holidays.”

“Happy Holidays,” Scully echoed, giving a smile of her own.

“Scully!” Mulder’s voice called, and she looked toward his voice, walking back to her from the house. Maybe it was still just so fresh, but she didn’t think she’d ever tire of hearing him say her name like that, a happy sound, just trying to get her attention. She blinked and saw him, a boyish smile on his face. “Let’s get out of here and find some place that sells pie,” he suggested. “I’m starved.”

She took him in, and a gleam of feeling, pure and warm as sunshine on a sky of storm filled her chest. It was amazing what two years could do. Today was the start of a whole new beginning.


	11. Chapter 11

He drove her back in the late afternoon after stopping for pie. He ordered apple even though apples were out of season, but the crust was perfect. She got key lime and licked her fork when she’d finished, enjoying the way his eyes focused on her mouth while she did it. A winter sunset came, the white sky darkening to grey like well-worn tennis shoes, eventually swallowed by darkness, so that even as daylight hours bled into early evening their surroundings suggested a deep night had fallen. He was taking her home, although suddenly the word felt strange in her mind. It was true, what she’d told him in the hospital years ago. When she was a little girl she’d dreamt of living in a home, not moving all the time to different Navy bases. That’s why she’d kept the picture of the house in the country. She thought if only she could stay somewhere for years and years and years, then she would be happy forever. The idea of stability, elusive and somehow always unreachable, comforted her immensely.

Now, as they pulled up in front of her apartment the conversation they’d been having came to an awkward close. What was she supposed to do now? Dozens of times he’d dropped her off at her apartment on the way back from the airport and she’d thanked him, opened the door, and struggled with her suitcase up the stairs alone. Sometimes, especially once they were together, she’d invite him up for a drink. But she didn’t have anything to drink here, and it would be awkward to go anywhere. She was tired.

“Do you want to come in and have a coffee?” she asked instead.

He looked at her and sighed, looking at the time. “Sure. Always better to drive in the dark with a little fuel in you.”

She smirked and got out of the car, waiting for him to close his door before they walked in together.

She couldn’t help it. The moment she unlocked the door and flipped on the lights, she looked around at her furniture and thought, _this will never fill a house_. It had been hours since Mulder had reluctantly spoken to the realtor, wanting to give Scully more time to make a final decision. But she had insisted, shocking even herself, that she wanted the farmhouse, then spent two hours in the car trying to wrap her head around it all. Mulder evidently was thinking along the same lines.

“I guess we’ll have to get some get some stuff before we move in,” he said.

She nodded, hanging up her coat and moving to the kitchen to start the coffee. “You want a TV, right?” she asked over her shoulder.

He hung up his coat and shrugged, following her. “Probably. And maybe get some fish.”

She went about starting the coffee, trying not to think too much. Remembering packing his apartment up and thinking about what to do with his fish, then walking to the tank to find one of them dead, resting like a buoy on the surface of the neglected water. She’d cried frustrated tears. Everything she had left of him was disappearing.

Two mugs in the cabinet caught her eye as his, and she took them out and set them on the counter, wondering if he’d notice. These were the things that made a house a home. “Or we could get a dog,” he suggested, following her.

“I don’t want a dog,” she said.  
He bowed his head. “Oh, yes, sorry. Rest in peace, Mighty Queequeg.” She slapped him gently on the arm but smiled.

They drank their coffee leaning against the kitchen counters, even though the table was only steps away. She told him more about the post at Quantico, how she’d be teaching two classes as well as acting as one of two forensic pathologists. The specifics would be gone over in her meeting, but she was looking forward to teaching again. The former F.B.I agent in her was also itching to move on from predictable deaths to more mysterious ones. Pleasantly warm and full from the coffee, she put her empty mug in the sink beside his, deciding to wash them once he left. He stood up from where he’d been leaning, and she looked over as he went to put the milk back.

“Well, thanks for coming to get me, and showing me the house,” she said, folding her arms. He walked back toward her.

“I’m glad you came,” he said, reaching to tuck a stray bit of hair behind her ear, cupping her cheek lightly. Her breath caught suddenly, and he noticed. She reached up quickly and kept her palm over his hand, holding him there. She swallowed. He looked at her, into her eyes, and recognized something there. “Can I kiss you?”

She nodded immediately. “Ye-,” and then his mouth was on hers, pressing the word between their lips. Last week, she’d thrown herself into his arms and tried to consume him, barely breathing as she kissed him, crying, so that he’d gently pushed her back and calmed her down. None of that now, although their kiss was quickly becoming anything but chaste. Now he was pressing her hips into the counter, and she had his face in her hands, whimpering when he deepened the kiss, feeling a flush spread from her chest to her neck, her cheeks, her heart pounding.

She’d known this would happen, hoped it would, but she hadn’t been prepared for how intense it would feel, how quickly she would be aroused by him. The dozens of fantasies she’d conjured up during his absence were rolling into one perfect reality, and she pushed against him, leading them away backwards from the kitchen and pulling him into the living room, taking her lips away from his as he peeled her sweater up over her head, helping him by raising her arms, seeing the garment fall to the floor as she grasped the fabric of his shirt, guiding him backwards to her bedroom. It was always like this in the movies, a trail of clothing leading to the bedroom, she thought as his shirt joined hers on the floor. He was sucking on her neck as the back of her legs hit the bed, his practiced hands removing her bra before she could even think about it.

They hadn’t said anything, both breathing too quickly, too focussed on getting their hands on each other. He made a noise between disbelief and pleasure at the weight of her breasts in his palms after so long, and stopped ogling her for long enough to start on the buttons of her pants, which she wriggled out of while he did the same. In her mind she was thinking how she wished maybe they’d taken more time. One minute he was leaving and the next they were naked except for underwear, and she was laying back on the bed, welcoming him into her arms. But she felt more turned on than ever in her life, and closed her eyes against the onslaught as his lips traveled from her neck down to her chest, suckling, licking, hands urgently stroking her sides.

“Oh, God, Scully,” he gasped, coming up for air, settling more firmly onto her when she squeezed him with her thighs. He ground into her, and she cried out, surprised at the pressure in her core, the pure need to feel him inside her. She pressed her pelvis against his, rewarded when she felt how hard he was. This could be potentially embarrassing for him, she realized. It could be over in seconds. She pulled at the waistband of his boxers and he squirmed out of them, a hand back on her breast, playing with the nipple.

Suddenly, she froze. “Mulder.”

He was too focussed on getting her out of her own underwear, and she put a firm hand on his chest. “Mulder! Hold on!”

For a moment she honestly thought he couldn’t wait another second, but he took a deep breath and calmed down, looking at her, confused.

“We need to use a condom,” she said, out of breath. “Do you have one?”

He blinked. “No. But, Scully, I haven’t, not since-” The arm propping him up trembled. “And you can’t-”

“I got pregnant before,” she said offhandedly, not wanting to dwell on it.

“I can pull out,” he offered, rather desperately. It killed the mood a great deal, and she tried to hide her disappointment.

“Okay,” she said, and he breathed a gasp of relief, lifting while she pushed down her black underwear and tossed it away with the help of a foot. Seconds later there he was, she closed her eyes and held her breath as she felt the tip of him enter her. God, she was embarrassingly wet.

A sudden frustrated groan as Mulder rolled off, flopping down next to her. “Shit! I’m sorry, Scully,” he said.

“What?” she asked, sitting up slightly on her elbows and looking at him. Had something gone wrong?

“I’m not that big of an asshole.” He leaned over and kissed her confused brow. “I’m sorry I don’t have a condom.”

She shook her head. “It’s just, I’m not on any birth control and I don’t want to risk it.”  
He nodded, swallowing. She looked down at his erect penis. He was clearly uncomfortable.

“Do you want me to...do you want help with that?” she asked, each word more painfully awkward than the one before it. She saw the true answer flicker briefly in his eyes, but he shook his head.

“I’m gonna take a quick shower. Is that okay?” he asked, and she nodded, pointing in the direction of the bathroom. He got up from the bed and headed across the room to the white door, opening it.

“Towels in the cabinet!” she called, and the door closed. She immediately curled into a ball, hands in fists, even her toes scrunched in frustration. It was horrible. All of her fantasies were tainted now. She should have just let her mind go and forgotten, instead of always being the responsible one. And to have him think she thought they needed one because she doubted any fidelity on his part! Her cheeks were hot. She groaned, mortified, and got out of bed, pulling her underwear back on and going through the room, picking up her clothes and putting them with the rest of her dirty laundry as the shower hissed on in the bathroom.

After considering pajamas, she just took one of his old t-shirts out of her dresser and pulled it over her head, hearing the shower stop at the same time. She supposed she could have gotten herself off there in the bed while he’d been in the shower, but somehow it felt sad to think about. Would he leave after his shower, embarrassed? She cut the light and crawled back into bed, the covers pulled down invitingly for him.

The bathroom door opened and Mulder reappeared, a towel wrapped around his waist. It was clear that he, too, had been wondering how this night would end when he immediately looked for his clothes. They were folded neatly on top of her dresser, but he looked down at the bed and, when she smiled shyly at him, dropped the towel and crawled in, laying down next to her. She looked at him, and he fingered the hem of the shirt.

“Take this off,” he said softly, and she sat up, pulled it over her head. She moved to lay half on him, her suddenly cold breasts warming when she snuggled into his side, slipping a silky leg over his left thigh. Her lips found the pulse point on his neck that she loved so much and lingered there until she felt his hand brushing hair out of her face so she could rest her cheek on his chest. The arm wrapped around her was solid and comfortable, his hand playing on her back, the fingers settling just under the seam of her underwear, low on her tailbone. In the dark his other hand came across, a palm smoothing over the swell of her hip and thigh, the backs of his fingers stroking the sensitive side of her breast.

It had been two years since she’d shared a bed with him, and despite the embarrassing fumbling of earlier, there was no awkwardness now as she lay naked with him. Comfortable, familiar, and sexual all at once, in many ways one of the most intimate moments she’d had in bed with him; no gasping for breath after orgasm, no wet spot, no exhausted, sweaty sleep afterward. Now she could explore his chest with her palm, his arm, his neck, the feel of his warm skin against hers. He was awake, watching her. The hand of the arm cradling her occasionally circled her low back, her hip, her bottom. After several minutes she leaned up to kiss him, his chest, then closed her eyes. His other hand found her body again, reaching over just to stroke her arm, the dip of her waist, then found the knee of her draped leg, deciding to rest there, and she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Halfway into a case of stomach cancer on Monday morning, her phone rang. She looked up at Brian, who was currently retracting Mr. Luke Dresser’s abdomen. He let her take hold of the retractor with one hand still inside the body, shed a glove and flipped off the tape recorder, then went to grab her phone from the bench on the other side of the room. He clicked the green button, then blue to put it on speaker, then held it over Mr. Dresser.

“Hello, this is Dana Scully,” she answered. She rarely got calls during the day, but kept the phone there for emergencies, a vestige from being an F.B.I agent -if she couldn’t carry a gun, someone who did was only a phone call away.

“Hey, Scully.” Mulder’s voice. She shrugged one shoulder a bit and Brian helped take off her sterile mask. She wiggled her nose. “What are you doing?”

She looked down. “Well, I’ve got my hands inside an abdominal cavity at the moment.”

“Who’s holding the phone?” he asked, confused.

“My assistant, Brian,” she said.

“Oh. Hi, Brian,” Mulder said. “Listen, can you tell me what Dr. Scully is wearing?”

“Mulder!” she squeaked, but Brian smiled.

“All scrubbed in, and her apron’s got bodily fluids all down the front.” Mulder chuckled. “Ah, bodily fluids.”

“Mulder, if you have something to say, please say it,” Scully said, raising a foot and twisting the ankle.

“Listen, I’m gonna go in and check out the new digs at the Hoover today, meet the team and everything, then I’ll probably head over to Quantico and look at what they’ve got going on, too.”

She nodded. “That’s good. Then you’ll be all ready to start next week. Make sure to ask about set hours.”

“Yeah, I will. I might be getting back to D.C a little late, though. I’ll probably call you from the car, okay?”

She wrinkled her eyebrows. “Mulder, I don’t want you talking on the phone while driving. Don’t worry about it, I’ll be tired anyway. Now that I’m leaving they’ve given me a preliminary autopsy schedule that looks like a crammed factory conveyor belt.”

He chuckled. “Okay, sounds good. Are they pissed you’re leaving? How did Brian take the news?”

Brian cleared his throat, looking at her. “Dr. Scully’s the best teacher I’ve ever had, but I’m happy she gets to work for the F.B.I again.”

Mulder chuckled again. “She’s pretty great, isn’t she?” She sighed, impatient. “As for the F.B.I, I don’t know how happy they’ll be to have her back. She was quite the trouble maker back in the day.” Brian looked at her in surprise, but she rolled her eyes.

“Mulder, I have to go,” she said.

“Okay. Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Scully.”

She indicated for Brian to turn the phone off. He crossed the room to put it down again, then went to grab a new pair of gloves, snapping them on and hurrying back, slipping her sterile mask back behind her left ear, then taking the retractor for her.

Brian flipped the tape recorder back on with his free hand, and she cleared her throat. “Preliminary examination of the stomach reveals...”

* * *

One bite into their sandwiches, Brian looked at her.

“Why does he call you ‘Scully’?” he asked.

She finished her bite and wiped the corner of her mouth. “He doesn’t like his first name, so he goes by Mulder. I guess at first it was a professional thing while we were partners, him calling me by my last name. It sort of stuck.”

“Even when you weren’t partners?” Brian asked. She paused, trying to decide if it was too invasive a question, then decided it wasn’t.

“I asked him not to call me 'Dana',” she said. Brian didn’t push that point.

“So, that was the friend you saw last week,” he observed, taking another bite.

She nodded. They ate in silence for several minutes, sharing a small bag of chips between bites. Brian watched her.

“He’s why you’re leaving,” he observed, no hint of disappointment or animosity in his voice. She looked at him, nodded. “Yes.”

She didn’t mind talking about it with Brian. It was easy to talk to him, and she knew he had no agenda, nobody to tell that cared, but his next statement threw her a little.

“You love him.” It was the first time someone had said it without anything other than truth behind it. Normally, she detected a hint of, ‘even though he was originally your F.B.I partner’, or, ‘and you still call each other by your last names,’ or, ‘even though you both knew it was against Bureau regulations’.

She nodded again. Then, because he was her friend, and because she had found over Sunday, after Mulder had talked about it a little, that she, too, was excited at the prospect of moving into the house, she said, “We bought a house. It’s a renovated farmhouse.”

He smiled. “I always like a good ending,” he said, and she smiled back. “Andrew and I talked about moving in together after the New Year, but he’s still not sure.”

She chuckled. “You better make sure the landlord’s okay with Andrew’s paintball art first.”

“He still hasn’t told his parents about us,” Brian admitted. “It’s been over six months.”

A wave of sympathy washed over her then. She didn’t really know what to say. “I’m sorry,” finally tripped off her tongue. “That must be very difficult.”

Brian shrugged. “I know it’s hard for him. I mean, my parents probably knew I was gay before I did. It wasn’t a big shock to them. They love Andrew.”

She set down her mostly-finished sandwich and put a hand on his back, patting it once. “Some people really need to take their time.”

* * *

Late December, 1999.

She hadn’t expected to stay so long in Montana -they usually wrapped up a case in a few days, but now it had been five, and she’d already performed three autopsies, all stab victims, strangulation present on one of them. She was awoken by Mulder at four in the morning to do a fourth autopsy. He drove her to the morgue, and she told him to go back to the motel, get some sleep, pick her up in three hours. He nodded, kissed her cheek, then watched her go.

A little boy, no more than six years old. He hadn’t been dead long, probably killed while they were having dinner. This early, there was no one to assist her, but she was used to that. She stalled during the external exam, noting the bruising, the strangulation marks, broken arm no wider than her own wrist. And finally, after noting everything, she gathered her tray of instruments, took a deep breath, and made the Y-incision. She covered the boy’s head until she found the undeniable cause of death, relieved she wouldn’t have to cut into his perfect, innocent face. She sewed him up when she finally finished, she couldn’t bear to leave him open like that. She even got a clean sheet out of the supply cupboard to wrap him in, tying it like a flower on his chest.

When Mulder arrived she was washing her instruments, making it easier for whoever would have to properly sanitize when they came in to work within the next hour. The sound of the double doors opening made her close her eyes, she immediately recognized his footfalls. He saw her at the sink, now washing her hands up to the elbows in only scrub pants and a bra, expecting no one other than him, it was easier to wash up like this.

“Cause of death?” he asked as she shook her hands, handing her a few paper towels to dry off with. She went to the locker room, and he followed.

“Same as the other victims,” she said shortly, reaching into an open locker and grabbing her sweater, then stepping out of the scrub pants and shoes and pulling up the pair of pants she’d put on at the motel. She’d go back to change before breakfast. Finally, after avoiding his eyes long enough, she raised them, the world blurry through warm tears ready to fall.

“What is it?” he asked, immediately reaching for her.

“It was a little boy, six or seven.” She began to weep, a hand on her chest, and he was there in an instant, a hand on her shoulder, pulling her in. “He was so small.”

It was clear that Mulder hadn’t known. She heard it in his, “I’m sorry,” but it was followed swiftly by, “Dana.” She flinched out of his arms.

“Stop calling me that,” she said, crossing her arms over herself.

“What?” he asked, confused.

“All of a sudden you’re calling me ‘Dana’, ever since we started sleeping together,” she said sharply. It was true, he’d done it in and out of bed for the past two weeks. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Why she had suddenly moved on from grief over an innocent boy’s death to annoyance at her partner. And why was she still crying?

He looked as if he honestly thought she might fall, pivoting as she moved with his hands held out a little. “I’m sorry,” he insisted, and it sounded like a question.

“Stop calling me ‘Dana’,” she said, “I hate it!” Then she looked through the glass in the locker room and saw the little boy on the gurney, all wrapped up like a mummy, and let out a dry sob again. “I’m not weak!”

“I never said you were weak!” he insisted, confused.  
“Let’s just go,” she said, grabbing her coat, wiping her eyes and nose on her sleep. “Let’s go.”

He never called her Dana again. She knew she had hurt him, that maybe he wanted to use her first name as a form of intimacy, but it felt strange to her. To him she had always been 'Scully'. In his bed that first night she had been ‘Scully’, and that’s who she wanted to be with him. She didn’t want everything to change, right down to how they addressed each other. She could count on her hands the times he’d called her ‘Dana’, and half of them were when he was scared, or thought she might be.

Within hours she’d apologized for her outburst, and he’d forgiven her instantly. They didn’t discuss it, but she trusted that he understood her reasoning, at least partly. A sudden realization as she apologized -he’d never expressly told her she couldn’t call him ‘Fox’, just that nobody but his mother knew him by that name. As the years had gone by, she’d noticed that this wasn’t completely true, but it hadn’t bothered her. Now they were on equal ground. There were always people who would call her by her first name, but not him.

* * *

The rest of the week was a series of autopsies piled on top of autopsies, one court appearance for her stab victim, meeting with her boss and the hospital, a meeting with Quantico, and sluggish packing once she got back to her apartment. The living room, which contained the bulk of her possessions, was packed up rather quickly considering she needed none of its contents during the week. Coming back, eating some simple, usually pre-prepared meal, showering, and falling into bed waiting for Mulder to call took about all the energy she could muster.

Quantico saw no point in her starting before the holidays, although she planned to go in on Saturday to set up her office, wanting everything to at least have some order when she finally took up her post as the second of two F.B.I certified forensic pathologists, along with the two classes she’d be teaching. The syllabuses were due by December twentieth. Another thing to add to her list of things to do.

Mulder, along with preparing for his new job, apparently also had the time to close on the house and begin to make some changes. She tried to get him to reveal exactly what changes he had in mind, begging him to choose neutral colors if he was painting the interior, and refer to her mother for any decisions regarding decor. Any disagreements on walls could easily be fixed with another two coats of paint, and she didn’t want to interfere with his sudden passion for home decorating. Her only request was that he install central heating, which he assured her was first on his list of priorities. When she asked what the second was, he wouldn’t tell her.

“Don’t worry, Dana,” her mother reassured her over the phone during her lunch break. “He took me over there yesterday. You’ll love it, although why you chose to live in the middle of nowhere is beyond me.”

“It’s not the middle of nowhere, Mom,” she insisted, not fully confident she was telling the truth. “There’s a town about five miles away. A hospital, a few supermarkets, it’ll be fine.”

“I went to that town,” her mother said. “Their gas station was closed for a lunch break.”

She smiled, muffling a laugh on the back of her hand. “Well, we’ll make sure to fill up in the morning.”

“What if they’re on a breakfast break?!”

She laughed out loud. “I don’t know, Mom. It’ll be fine. Mulder did tell me he was making up one of the rooms as a bedroom so that if anyone came over they’d have somewhere to sleep. We’ve got that huge amount of land. I bet Ginny and Charlie would love if we’d take the kids for a weekend once everything’s settled.”

“I suppose that’s true,” her mother said.  
“Anyway, I’m meeting Mulder there on Saturday. I’m driving some of my stuff up.”

On Saturday morning she loaded her car to the brim with boxes, lamps, towels, curtains, and a rolled carpet she managed to squeeze in with the help of a friendly neighbor. On the floor in front of the passenger seat lay a pair of black rain boots, in case she ended up parking in a pool of mud. It had been sprinkling all week.

As she made the right turn onto the gravel road and drove carefully through the thicket of trees she squinted ahead.

“Okay, Mulder, what have you done?” she asked herself out loud. When she emerged from the trees she surveyed the fields, noticing the black and brown cows grazing all around, even on the slopes. A red pickup truck was pulled up in front of the neighbor’s house, muddy and well-loved, by the look of it. She looked at her own house, then at her watch. He was running late and she, typically, was perfectly on time. The road wasn’t as muddy as she’d expected, and she parallel parked next to a small shed she hadn’t noticed before. It looked rather new. Perhaps they’d added it during the week. In any case, it was padlocked. She opened her door and did a precautionary shoe change, reaching deep under the boxes in the passenger seat to find her clean rain boots and slipping off her own shoes.

She took her keys out of the ignition and started toward the stairway that led up the porch, only to realize that she didn’t yet have a key to the house. Buttoning her coat and tying it around her, she began to survey the house from outside. The sides were greenish-brown at the bottom from grass and mud, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed by repainting the outside at some point. The rest of the outside walls, which before she’d seen as chipped now held a certain charm. She took in the three bottom windows and three top windows on the left side, noting that five of the six already had curtains hanging, or at least insulation curtains.

Around to the back of the house there was a small screened porch just wide enough to store what looked like endless logs of firewood. The porch was shielded from downward-falling rain by a small copper roof, which looked to be a renovated feature either by Mulder or the previous owners. She raised an eyebrow, climbing the set of stairs to try and peek in the window that she knew was situated at the end of the hallway that led to the stairs. This curtain looked to be a dark blue or brown, she couldn’t be sure. She hoped it wasn’t black.

Going back down the stairs she decided to investigate the field, turning left and walking out, surveying the land around with a hand to shield her face from the December sun. She walked along the fence a long way, taking in the edge of the forest behind the field to her right and the thinner gathering of trees to the left, up where the gravel road peeked through before driving down to the house. She came across a cow, grazing fifteen feet or so away from her, and stepped up onto the first plank of the dark fence, bracing herself with one hand on the second plank and holding out her hand.

“Come here,” she called, flexing her fingers out, childlike in her wish for it to approach her. It looked up from the ground and took her in, perched there. “Come on,” she called again.

The cow flared its nostrils and made an uninterested noise, then looked back at the ground, taking up its grazing again. Scully jumped off the fence and back into the slightly overgrown grass of her own property. She closed her eyes and inhaled, the winter wind skating over her cheeks, her nose numb.

The sound of gravel crunching under tire, and she opened her eyes, a thrill in her belly at the sight of his car coming down the road. She supposed that sound would announce anyone’s arrival in the future. She couldn’t see inside his car, but began trekking back to the house from the field -she’d wandered almost halfway through it, so that now the house looked quite small.

By the time she joined him he was opening the side doors of his car and taking out several boxes of his own, stacking them on the gravel.

“I see you came prepared,” he said, noticing her boots. She nodded. “I take the word ‘rustic’ seriously.”  
He chuckled. “Ready to see the inside?”

She nodded again, rubbing her cold hands together. He went first and unlocked the front door, then looked at her feet. “Probably a good idea to take those off,” he advised, and she noticed there was already a doormat to wipe off her feet before stepping out of the boots. “Want to be surprised, or no?”

She exhaled in surrender. “Okay, I’ll be surprised, Mulder.”

He looked thrilled, as she knew he would be, and got her to close her eyes, then walked her inside, covering her eyes with his palms through the entryway, then took them off. Despite the silliness of being surprised like that, she caught herself smiling at the sight of the downstairs. He leaned around to see her reaction and she blinked back at him, surprised.

“You did this yourself?” she asked, astonished.

He shook his head. “With the help of several people who knew what they were doing, and heavily influenced by your mother on several occasions. Don’t give me too much credit.”

She walked into the living room. The curtains on the left side, framing the two windows, were the same color blue as the kitchen tiles, with hooks to pull them back during the day. Something had been done to the floor so that the wood shone, seeming brighter. A coffee table made of a slab of polished wood, an organic shape, had been placed in front of the wood burning stove, presumably waiting for a sofa to complete the picture. A white bookshelf stood between the two windows, not too tall, with room to add a lamp or act as some sort of mantle. The kitchen window, however, had a more delicate white curtain. A coat or two of paint had been added, but he’d kept the warm yellow. Two stools had been placed on the outside of one counter. The downstairs was still rather bare, but somehow looked like it had gotten a makeover.

“I didn’t get a carpet because I thought you might already have one, and I looked at a bigger couch if you wanted a new one, but it’s up to you.” He looked a little worried. “Scully? Is it okay?”

How could she have not appreciated the beauty in this simple, small, rather unremarkable house a week ago? She had seen plain, sufficient, and quirky with its antique kitchen and bathtub. But he’d seen this. All along, he’d seen this.

“It’s wonderful, Mulder,” she said, still a little bit surprised at the truth of her statement. “I love it.”

That seemed to be the catalyst he needed, because he took her hand. “Let me show you the upstairs.”

The three bedrooms, as well as the hallway, had been painted a wise white, and only white insulation curtains hung at the windows. In one room there was a desk pushed against the right wall, a chair in front, a small trash can. It almost looked ready for someone to sit down and work at.

“So either we could get you a desk and just share this room, and use the other as another bedroom, or we could each have an office. Whatever you want,” he said. She shrugged.

“I know I’ll need space to work at home, but we could probably get by with sharing,” she said. “I’ll have one at work, too.”

He guided her to the bathroom and she took a look inside. Clearly, work had been done here. It had been repainted a light blue, a new sink and counter had been installed with a small cabinet on each side to store 'all your creams and stuff'.

She looked back at him, standing in the doorway watching her explore. Her eyes were warm. “I really love it, Mulder.”

They spent the next two hours bringing in boxes and unpacking as much as they could. The carpet didn’t really match the curtains, but they put it down anyway. A lamp went on the top of the bookshelf, another three sat on the coffee table, waiting for more surfaces to become available. She hadn’t brought much furniture, just practically the whole kitchen, telling herself she could survive on takeout and cans of soup and sandwiches until the final move. By the end of the day the cabinets were practically full of dishes, a drawer got cutlery, pots and pans were stored in a lower cabinet. A closet in the upstairs hallway beside the bathroom got towels and bed linens. They hung her opaque, white curtains in the upstairs bedrooms because there wasn’t really anything else to do with them.

“My last day is the twenty-first,” she said, sitting on one of the stools while he straightened up the carpet. “Next Friday.”

He nodded, standing up. “And you said you start Quantico after the New Year?”

“Bright and early January third,” she said.

He whistled. “Nice vacation. I go back the twenty-sixth and work until the thirty-first, then I’m back on the second. And, technically, I’m on twenty-four hour duty, seven days a week.”

She shrugged. “Well, we’re used to that.” He nodded.

“I’m having the furniture brought over next Saturday, then I guess I’ll be ready on Sunday,” she said carefully.

He looked at her. “I can be here Saturday for the furniture. I’ll set things up.”

“Thanks.”

Things felt awkward. Mulder, of course, managed to lighten the mood. “What do you say about a little house warming?” He pulled her down off the stool and drew her into his arms, kissing her even as she laughed and shook her head.

She pulled her head away from his. “Although I could do with some warming, it’s freezing in here. Tell me you got the heating installed.”

He tried to kiss her but she put a hand on his chest. “Mulder, you told me that was first on your list of priorities. That is a direct quote.”

“Scully, I thought about it, and if the people who lived here before survived without heating, why don’t we just try it? Just for a month?” He tried to kiss her again, and she let him get away with it before breaking apart.

“Mulder, you promise me that after one month, if I say I want central heating, you’ll get me central heating?”

He looked at her seriously, but there was merriment in his eyes. “I promise.”

“And do you also promise to let me have a space heater in the bedroom, or the office, when I need it?”

He looked pained. “It always gets so muggy, and-” she put her fingers on his lips.

“It’s a space heater or I’m sleeping downstairs next to the stove.”

He smiled against her fingers and nodded. His ‘okay’ was muffled. She then removed her hand and replaced it with her lips, kissing gently, but enough to make him squeeze her waist.

“Okay, now take me to get something to eat before I drive home.”


	12. Chapter 12

She sat silently in the car, glanced up at the front window of her apartment that looked out over the street, then looked back to her hands, white and cold in her lap. The car wasn’t on. She just needed a minute to sit there before pulling out of her space in front. It wasn’t about the apartment, the soft melancholy that had overtaken her when she handed the landlord her key and walked down to the car, putting a small box in the trunk carrying her remaining possessions. It was the memory of doing almost the exact same thing two years ago, bringing the last of his things down and into the car, then just sitting, her hands trembling on the wheel, glued there. Soon there would be a new tenant. Someone else’s bed where his had been. It would smell different. Never again would she walk over that threshold. The very thought ripped at her soul.

She’d driven home that day in a fog. It still wasn’t real. Any minute he would be back. Any minute now. That night, getting ready for bed, she found the little sparkly UFO ornament she’d planned on giving him and thrown it on the floor. Instead of shattering into a hundred tiny pieces, it bounced, landing safely on the carpet. She’d put it back in her drawer, pulled on one of his shirts over her sweater, laid down, and cried.

Today she looked up, started the car, backed out of the spot, and began the drive home. All along Laburnum, all along Grove the halls were decked, the inflatable Santas and snowmen, she even passed inflatable wise men beside a large, wooden nativity. Lights wound up railings, gathered messily in trees, fake candles shone brightly in windows. Traffic was heavy on the interstate, rows and rows of glowing-red lightning bugs, all crammed together. She didn’t have a lot of time to waste, so she took the next exit and hoped it spit her out somewhere where she could run some last minute errands.

By the time she got to the house it was seven, outside as dark as coal. Blue-grey smoke floated out of the chimney, indicating that he’d begun using the wood burning stove. She hoped in his gusto he’d managed to keep all smoke flowing up, and not throughout the house. That got her thinking, too. Had he installed a smoke detector? She parked her car beside his and walked up the stairs to the porch. Knocking on her own door felt strange, but walking in unannounced seemed rude. She was saved from either one when Mulder appeared, at the end of the hall. She waved, then opened the door and walked in. Inside was warm and smelled like burnt pizza.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she apologized, lingering in the entryway.

“Yeah, you said five,” he said. “It’s after seven.” He was looking at her, puzzled when she didn’t move. “Uh, come in.”

She shook her head. “Can you put on your shoes and come help me with my stuff?”

“Sure.”

She waited on the porch, shivering, while he slipped his shoes on. When he stepped outside, she nudged her head toward the car, and he looked, confused. She watched, joy like a scarf around her heart, as he took in the Christmas tree strapped to the roof of her car. “It was practically the last one there, and he gave me a deal, so I just got it.”

Mulder nodded, squeezed her arm, then hurried down the stairs. She followed him, and together they freed the tree, carried it inside, pine needles falling all over the floor, and leaned it against the wall while they brought in the three bags containing lights, ornaments, a tree stand, and a tin star, all of which she’d grabbed at the last minute at a CVS where the Christmas aisle looked like it had been raided after an apocalypse.

The tree was about as tall as she was, but curved slightly, some of the branches browning. Oh well. She hung up her coat in the hall and squatted to position the tree as Mulder held it straight, screwing the thin trunk into place on the stand. It still looked sort of lopsided, but it didn’t matter. She’d almost forgotten about it, about the fact that he’d wanted to get a tree the week he’d died. It was one of the first things she’d told Skinner in the car on the way to the morgue - ‘ _we were going to do Christmas together_ '. And that year she’d skipped Christmas, instead driving around like a grieving widow. How she’d unconsciously ended up at her mother’s. But then it hadn’t even really been about Christmas. It had all centered around the fact that he was gone. That he wasn’t coming back. That not only would he not be there for Christmas, he wouldn’t be there for any single other day. No more holidays. No more Nothing Days. He was gone and she wasn’t and nothing would ever be the same again.

“Mom bought a plastic tree the year my parents got married, and we had the same one every year,” he told her, opening a box of lights and fumbling when he found them to be in a chaotic ball. She tried to untangle it as he stood still.

“So did we,” she said, shrugging, then looked up. “Oh! Did you want one of those? I thought you meant a real tree.”

He shook his head. “No, I wanted a real tree. I could do without the needles, though.”

She shrugged again. “Good thing I brought the vacuum cleaner on this trip. Okay, put those on,” she directed. He hesitated, looking at her. “However you want, we’ve got a whole other box.”

He set to work, and she went to one of the bags, taking out a power strip and returning, plugging it into the wall and plugging the bottom of strand of lights in. They lit up immediately, white and simple. From where she was sitting on the ground, next to the power strip, she glanced up at him, the concentration in his brow as he carried out such a simple task, winding the strand around, weaving between prickly branches.

Any dinner completely forgotten, they opened the boxes of plain silver, gold, and red ornaments and hung them along with the second strand of lights. At one point, she rolled up the sleeves of her sweater to her elbows. It was warm inside, and she glanced at the stove, a fire roaring inside behind protective glass, warm light flickering out across the coffee table, Mulder’s couch. She didn’t want to admit it, not out loud, because he’d never let her hear the end of it, but she was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t too heated inside.

When the tree was finished, and once she had vacuumed the entryway, her mind started wandering toward the thought of food. For the time being, however, she drank a simple glass of water, set in the sink, and flipped the lights off on the wall. The light from the fire and the tree would almost be enough to eat dinner in. Mulder was crouched in front of the stove with some sort of poker in his hand, moving the logs around in there. He looked up slightly when the lights switched off, but quickly back at his work. She crouched down to his height, but found the fire too hot, and moved back, sitting on the coffee table.

“How often do we have to clean it out?” she asked.  
He shrugged a little. “Depends on how much we use it.” He finished tending the fire and shut the stove door again, standing to go sit on the couch. She watched him survey the living room, looking like all he needed was an armchair, a good book, and corncob pipe to complete the image of a man sitting proudly in front of his fireplace. After examining the room, lingering on the glittering tree, his eyes found her again. For some reason, she got spooked, and stood up. He made space for her on the couch, but she passed him.

“I’m going to get some air,” she explained. “It’s hot in here.”

A shock of night air on her face when she went out the front door, walking straight to the edge of the porch. Arms braced on the rail, she thought she might burst into tears she was so happy, but she didn’t want him to see. Flakes of snow sprinkled on her warm face, melting upon contact, and she noticed that the ground was grey with the beginning of a real snowfall. Was she dreaming?

All this in three weeks. To go to sleep having no one and wake to find them in your arms. These things didn’t happen. They just didn’t happen. Part of her was guilty, even though she had no reason to feel that way. She thought, Why not Ginny, who’d lost her sister? Why not her mother, who’d lost her husband? Hell, why not Yoko, who’d lost Lennon? Why not _anyone_ else? Why her? Part of her still felt she didn’t deserve it, she didn’t deserve to be this happy, when so many others had been wounded by death.

The door opened behind her about thirty seconds after she’d rushed out, and she didn’t turn around. He didn’t touch her, just stood at the doorstep. Her insides twisted. What if he thought she was running away, or having second thoughts? It couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Scully? You okay?” he asked carefully.

She wiped fingers under her eyes and turned to face him. “Yeah, it was just hot in there,” she said, accompanied by a smile.

“Well, maybe now you’ll be able to make it through that first month without your space heater,” he joked, but worry was trying to hide in his eyes.

She nodded, swallowed, then went to him, wrapping her arms around him, weaving under his. He wore a t-shirt, and although his chest felt warm she knew the front porch in winter might not be the best place to have a conversation, especially with an inviting fire just inside. She looked up at him.

“Mulder,” she said, her voice steady.  
“Yeah?” he asked, nervous.  
“I’m so happy.” Her throat burned with emotion.

He hesitated for a moment, perhaps waiting for a ‘but this isn’t going to work’, but she just smiled and nodded, trying to reiterate what she’d said without having to say it again, making him understand.

“Yeah?”

She nodded again, land he swept her up off her feet, kissing her smiling lips, spinning her a little, then setting her back down. She reached behind her for the doorknob, then remembered it was on the other side now -a foreign house, even though it was hers. That made her laugh, but she shut up when he pulled the door closed behind them and held her face in his hands, kissing her over and over so that her brain went fuzzy and she fell back into the wall of coats and scarves, now holding the back of his neck, using that point for leverage as she tried to make herself taller for him.

They pulled apart for air before he dove in again, and she whimpered, pushing herself forward from the wall, trying to lead him back to the living room.

They managed to remain relatively glued together, narrowly avoiding the table and the back of the couch as they moved sloppily toward the stairs. There they paused again, and she broke away from his mouth. He just moved on to her neck.

“Mulder, the fire, should y-”  
“It’s fine,” he mumbled against her skin, and she kissed him quickly before turning to go upstairs.

There was something about having to go up the creaky staircase, a strange and cumbersome intermission between the wild dancing of tongues in the entryway, the first floor, and now to separate while she led him up quickly by the hand. Their room, the furthest in the hall, seemed far away, and she turned, giggling, so he could get at her anew. If she weren’t wearing a skirt that made it dangerous, now she’d be jumping into his arms, lessening their exaggerated height difference without her shoes and feeling him hold her like that. But now she led him down the hall, and, once inside the room, over to the bed, brought here only two days ago. He broke away from her when she sat down, moving to the bedside lamp.

“I want to see you,” he said in a low voice, and she nodded, out of breath, smoothed hair off her face, wondering if her makeup had smeared -surely it had-, making her look wanton. Before, in her room in Richmond, they’d relied on city light leaking in through the curtains. Now the room was bathed in warm light. He sat beside her.

The scuffle of flying clothes she’d presumed would ensue turned into a sudden awkwardness, an uncertainty. She thought perhaps Mulder was ashamed at what a mess this had all turned out to be - the suicide, her grief, his isolation- and for her part, she couldn’t avoid a moment of remembered pain from the last time they’d made love, the night before he’d left her to fend for herself, left her for two days -two years . And if he hadn’t made it back to her...if he’d been dead forever...In the entryway she hadn’t been able to get enough of him, now she couldn't look at him. Instead, she pressed her forehead to his, her good horse.

He knew enough not to speak, not to move. He put his arm on her and they sat for a moment. How lucky they were, to have found each other again, in this world that could be so cruel.

“I’m so sorry, Scully,” he said, but she stopped his words, planting her fingers against his mouth. He didn’t have to say anything. She just needed time to remember him again.

Her fingers moved over his cheek, up to his ear and brow, much as they had the night he’d come back to her, when she’d read him like braille and tried to recognize the man she loved in his eyes, until he couldn’t stand it anymore and turned her hand over to kiss the palm. And the hand came to life, as in a magic act where a piece of paper suddenly becomes a dove and flies away when the magician softly blows on it. She brought his face to hers, fingers in his hair. His mouth was warm when she opened her own to him, stroking over his tongue.

He cupped her head and tucked hair behind her right ear, a thumb on her cheekbone through another softer kiss, another, and then he pulled away, his hands moved down her arms, fingers on the hem of her sweater. A smile from her then, she knew he liked this part, and she raised her arms so he could peel it off her, unveiling the brightness of the flesh underneath. She was pulling his own shirt off the moment he tossed her sweater to the ground, and he grinned, leaning forward to make quick work of her bra. The warmth of his hands on her breasts even as the nipples puckered, index fingers puzzling over her clavicles, sharper than he would have remembered them, coming to a hard bone visible on her shoulder. She let him look at her armor of grief, she wore it proudly.

Lines came across his forehead now -one, two, three- like waves coming in low and even on the shore. He was blaming himself. _I’m so sorry_ , he’d said only moments ago. She embraced him, then pulled back a little to look into his eyes.

“I don’t care about that now,” she confessed. He’d shown up on her doorstep and heard her shout at him through an intercom to go away. He’d found his own way in. She’d spent so many hours in disbelief, resenting him, angry at him, and all for what? Here he was.

Standing up from the bed, she turned her back and let him work the zipper on her skirt, push it down her hips, down her legs, another hand coming back to pull her underwear off as well. As soon as she stepped out of the pooled clothing and kicked it away he had her turned back around, pulled between his legs. Leaning forward, his mouth and and tongue and breath on her breasts, beside and under them, slow kisses over her ribs, her belly jumping, kisses there a surprise, a hand on the dip in her back, another on her waist, bringing her even closer. Eyes closed, she kept a hand on his head to anchor herself as his lips toured her body.

She barely noticed him moving her around, so lost in a warm haze of feeling, that her eyes flew open at the feel of his cheek against her thigh. Laying her back on the bed, fully unclothed with him presumably still half dressed, bent down, his mouth between her legs now. A sharp inhale, then she reached down to lock her palm over his hand resting on - yes, there it was- the plane of her belly, holding her down when her back arched at the touch of his tongue. She spread her legs further.

Her breath still caught in her chest, she looked down at him, his dark head. She’d forgotten what it was like for his lips to do what her hands did in his absence. She exhaled raggedly, her fingertips not far from his hair. He looked up at her -must have seen something on her face, something that made him look back at his work and do that thing with his tongue, the swirling and teasing. She fell back and cried out sharply into her own palm, her eyes screwed shut as he continued, not giving her a break. God, what a mouth. Finally, he let up, and she exhaled all the energy she felt she had left, breathing out his name, only to inhale again when he took her clit between his lips and sucked, hard. She turned her face to the other side, sobbing pleasure into the bedclothes, her other hand in his hair now. It seemed to go on for an impossibly long time. She’d thought it before, but now she was sure, this was the most incredible orgasm she’d ever experienced in her life. This was why one needed a body, why it was worth all the pain, the hunger and harm we were prey to, why the angels envied us.

Mulder came up for air and stroked his palm over her stomach one last time before stepping back and struggling out of his clothes, the heavy, satisfying fall of his belt even on the carpet they’d put down. She reached blindly for him and was rewarded when he crawled up and over her, pausing to nip at her breasts again, her neck. She pulled him down for a kiss, still breathless.

“God, you don’t kiss by the book, do you?” she asked, eyes the color of a mossy-blue riverbed.

He chuckled. “Scully, are you asking for your sin again?” A skirmish of wit between them.

She leaned up to kiss him again, then fell back. “Oh, my God.”

How wonderful to have him naked in her arms again, the weight of him like a familiar, well-loved book. She was sleepy and sated, but felt evidence that he was very much not. Still laying at a horizontal dividing the bed, she scooted sideways and moved them toward the headboard, the nest of pillows, reaching to toss the the more decorative ones down to the floor, then bringing him back into her arms. Something was rising in her, a fierce rush of power knowing what pleasure her body could give him, was giving him, from the look in his eyes. Had he dreamt of this, as she had, wishing she could bring him back from the dead? Never had she imagined them in a new house, beginning a new life. In her dreams they were desperate, so eager for each other that love was almost lost and they were consumed by pure sensation. That was what she had felt in Richmond when they’d gone to bed. But imagination and reality almost always contradict each other in a wicked game, and this was contradiction in spades.

And there had been desperation in the way he’d made love to her with his mouth only moments ago, her face buried in soft sheets, because to look at him would be too much. That one dash of his eyes made her squeeze her own shut, she couldn’t look at him without wanting him so intensely it made her head hurt. Now she sensed a similar desperateness in him, in the way his arm trembled as he held himself up, the way he was looking down at her now, like he didn’t know what to say and that ‘I love you ’ couldn’t possibly sum it up.

Suddenly, he stopped, moving to leave her arms.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, holding his shoulders, squeezing his hips with her thighs so that he shut his eyes for a moment, concentrating.

“Condom,” he explained in a tight voice, and she pulled him down.

“No.”  
“No?” he asked.

“I don’t want to.” The implications of what she said surprised both of them, and she saw something flicker through his eyes then. She couldn’t read it, but felt a weighted energy fill the air, and he leaned down to kiss her, stroking over her tongue quickly, like a promise.

She spread her legs more, cradling his hips, reached down to help position him, and watched the expression that shifted between relief and torture as he slid home, her name on his lips, his lips by her ear, wet breath on her neck, sloppy kisses as he found his rhythm.

The heavy feel of him inside her, the delicious sensation of being filled up, this too she’d forgotten. And how happy her body was to accommodate his as a hand came to stroke the inside of her thigh, push it out further until she simply stretched her leg up and locked it around him, improving the angle so that he sunk deeper inside. A groan from him like pain, a shaky, “Oh, God,” accompanied by stronger thrusts. A hand on her breast now, less gentle than before, more proprietary, and she loved him for it, pushing her chest up so there was more of her to hold onto.

She wasn’t going to orgasm again this way, not without help, and since she’d already died and he’d taken her to heaven she was enjoying the simple glory of wrapping herself around him, holding him inside her body. It was a surprise, then, when he raised himself up, their chests sticky and shining with sweat, and brought her hand from around his neck to the place where they were joined, encouraging her. Honestly, she didn’t know if she’d be able to after the intensity of earlier, and didn’t want to end up frustrated, or disappointing him in some way.

“Mulder, I don’t know if I-”

“Yes, you can,” he insisted, and watched as she started circling. He continued stroking in and out, leaned down to take her nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue around, sucking as his other hand stroked the swell of her hip, pushing hard into her as her own motions sped up. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the side, whimpering as he kissed her neck. All at once, there it was, a burst of ecstasy as bright as a star, fast and hard. Like a shard from the sky she floated gently down, opening her eyes as he was finishing, feeling pressure near her cervix. He lingered a moment, safe inside, kissed her shoulder, then rolled off to the side. After a minute of silence where they just lay breathing, he pulled her away from the wet spot to lay on him, her body as limp as a violet after a spring rain. Her head felt heavy, and she lay it on his chest, feeling the racehorse beat of his heart slow under her cheek. Fingers stroked through her hair.

Strange, she thought perhaps she would have cried now, but found she had no desire to. It was there, and maybe it would come out another time, but for the moment she felt warm and full and loved beyond measure. He didn’t have to say it, he didn’t need to hear it. She told him by the kiss she pressed on his chest, the way she slid off to the other side, draping herself, as she always had, over his body with one leg swung over his hip. His fingers traced over back, he liked to touch her there, she’d noticed. A place on her body she only saw in mirrors, that he saw every day.

She thought maybe he would fall asleep without talking, just holding her to him, her own eyelids were beginning to feel heavy. She thought if God sculpted a perfect moment out of this life that hollow would be here, in this room, in this bed, this vibrant half-light, with only the feel of his warm skin against hers, the scent of the sheets -the snow falling outside, each flake like an angel’s kiss.

“Scully?”  
She nuzzled his chest a little. “Mm?”  
“I thought about you...every day for two years I thought about you,” he said.  
She considered this, she knew it was true. “Why don’t you talk about it?”  
“It?”  
“Texas,” she clarified. Fingertips in her hair again, like lazily searching for a page in a book. “It wasn’t as bad for me as it was for you.”

She didn’t argue with this, although she knew it must have been difficult isolated from everything familiar for so long. But she’d never killed herself. He’d never seen her cold body, seen her as a thing. He couldn’t know. “You can talk about it, Mulder.”

He took a deep breath, then stroked over her back again. “Not tonight, though.”  
She nodded against his shoulder, kissed his neck.  
“Tonight I just want to be here, with you.” He reached to turn off the lamp.  
As their skin cooled they climbed under the covers, falling into a warm, inviting sleep.

* * *

She opened her eyes, stretched a little, a hand smoothing over the right side of the bed. Cold. This was her bed, she knew it was. It was too dark. She scrambled to find her bedside lamp, flipped the switch. Nothing, no one. The covers were pulled up around her.

“No,” she breathed. “No.” The word felt like salt on a wound in her mouth.

She sat up, flung the blankets back. Not even an indentation where a body would have been. A flash of heat over her entire body, then cold. She looked around wildly, then leaned over the side of the bed and threw up once, her eyes streaming, twice. A sudden, cold hand on her shoulder, someone’s large hand.

“Scully? Scully, what’s going on?”  
She looked up at the sound of Mulder's voice, but couldn’t focus on him at first through her tears.

Then she saw him, his eyes wide, looking at her. A choked noise from her, and then she lunged for him, pulling him close.

“I thought,” she croaked, then sighed. “I don’t know what I thought.” A cough. He smoothed his palm over her back.

“I just went to the bathroom. Come on, let’s clean you up.” He helped her out of bed, she stepped gingerly over the vomit on the ground. Mulder led her to the bathroom, where he flipped on the light and turned on the shower, pulling the blue curtain around the tub. “Wait for it to warm up,” he said. “You think you can wait here while I clean up in there?”

She nodded, shivering in the cold, suddenly realizing they were both still naked. It was still so dark outside, she wasn’t used to the night of the countryside compared to the city. There she had street lamps, car tail lights, neon signs. Here she had only naked moonlight and a sprinkling of stars.

The creak of the stairs as he went down, came back up, she sat on the closed lid of the toilet and took deep breaths, watching him clean up the sick, then go back downstairs. She stayed absolutely still. The bright mirror became foggy with steam, like a puddle of rain freezing over in January.

He was back. He tested the water, then took her hand, easing her up and into the tub. She gasped as the warm water hit her head, her face, the vomit on her chin and chest washing away instantly. Then he was standing behind her, his arms around her, holding her. She turned so that the water hit the back of her head and buried her face in his chest.

“I’m here,” he said. A kiss on her wet head. She wrapped her arms around him and wept, and he held her until there were no more tears, only warm water running over them and down the drain.

By the time they had dried themselves off and shivered back to bed the exhaustion of such an emotional release began to lure her back to sleep. But only moments after returning to bed she slowly moved to begin planting kisses on his chest, his shoulders, his neck, her hand reaching down under the sheets, stroking him. Soon she was in his lap and he was inside her, filling her up again.

This time it was like a poem, carefully chosen rhyming stanzas of movement, her arms draped around his neck as he held her on his lap, lazy, snow-moon kisses. Quiet love, as her noises were muffled into his neck. She delighted in his more animal noises against her chest, by her shoulder, the feel of his hand gripping her hip, another stroking her side, holding her waist. Every noise he made, the feel of his fingers digging into her hip, assured her that he was alive, that she was in his arms, each stroke inside told her that he was made of flesh. And when he shuddered beneath her, pulling her close, and gasped out her name, his hot mouth near her neck, she brought his face up for a gentle, tired kiss. _This was real_. Still coming off his high, he pressed his forehead against hers and she closed her eyes, focusing on the pressure of their skulls together as he pulsed inside her.

Finally, seduced by sleep, she closed her eyes, feeling safe when he curled around her, and fell into a dream.

She dreamed of the night forest, beyond the fields, deep in the trees. Cold, black, and starless, snow coming down. She had to gather wood for a fire, but in the dark, she could only assemble the smallest pile. She squatted and rubbed two cold stones together, the occasional spark, but the wind won over every time. She was about to give up when she discovered a beautiful matchbox in her pocket. The hiss of the match, it lit right away, and she let the flame lick the sticks of kindling.

A fire was born in the dark. Warm, though when she passed her hand through it, it didn’t burn her. She picked the flame out of its nest and held it in her cupped hand. And in the dream she realized -this was her child. She felt it warming her face, like a kiss. It knew her. She passed it gently from hand to hand, marveling. She had to be careful; it was just a small flame -tender, shy, but bright. She always hoped she would have a human child, not a handful of fire, but she understood, as it pushed the inky darkness away, that of course she would have a fire child -to chase the darkness out with light. When she held it too close, it began to scorch her coat. She needed something to put it in -a lantern, a tin box, something to keep it from the wind. She held it as close as she could and fed it tiny scraps of wood, and to her delight, it consumed them. But how to keep it safe? She couldn’t put it down, certainly not in a pocket. How would she sleep, knowing it was so vulnerable? She had to steady herself with one hand on the cold earth.

When she awoke, the sun was barely up, a dull December day rising behind the trees she saw through the curtains. She immediately looked at her hand, tucked next to her face. Sniffed it. Empty. Could she still smell the smoke? Yes, from where it blossomed out of the modern chimney. Through the thin pane she smelled it, and heard the squeak of the door as the stove opened downstairs, another log placed carefully inside. She stretched, and the sheets and comforter of her cocoon shifted, the air cold on her breasts and back as she sat up, smoothing a hand over her face, waking.

She looked beside her, and found herself oddly relieved to be alone. Shivering and naked, she slipped out from the sheets. Her thighs ached, but she crossed the room to find clothes in the dresser, the warmth and faint smell of coffee and pine beckoning her downstairs.

Mulder was standing up in the living room in a long sleeved shirt and flannel pajama pants, arms crossed, eyeing the fire. She smiled.

“Mulder, I think that stove might be the other woman in this relationship.”

He looked up at her, although he must have heard the creak of the stairs as she’d walked down, there would be no sneaking around in this house. He cracked a smile, then uncrossed his arms and looked away from the stove, waiting for her before they walked to the kitchen together.

“Nah, it’s puppy love,” he joked. “Look, I made coffee.”  
She raised an eyebrow at him. “I suppose you think I’ll forgive you.”

"Ha-Ha," he mock-laughed, reaching up to get her a mug, then pouring her coffee and sliding it over to her. This time, she didn’t take sugar, and they walked back to the living room, in front of the fire. She put her coffee on the wood table and snuggled into Mulder’s side when he sat down on one end of the couch. He seemed surprised at first, then wrapped an arm around her. She turned his face to kiss him.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t up there,” he said, perhaps thinking she was upset after waking alone. “I wanted to make the fire so you wouldn’t be cold and get out the space heater.”

She chuckled. “I think you made the right decision.” She kissed him again.

“You slept all right, then?” he asked.

She nodded, then realized she hadn’t actually slept that much, considering the fact that in the space of about eight hours they’d had amazing sex, she’d thrown up, they’d taken a long shower while she cried, had sex again, and she’d woken just after dawn. Her dream was puzzling her, but for some reason she didn’t want to share it. She was continually surprised by her desire to be close to him, to see him, to know where he was these past few weeks. Independent by nature, she had never been needy in her relationships. In fact, she had often been the one to request space. Even with Mulder there had been times she’d felt stifled. Mostly when they spent time together after a work day. She preferred seeing him on weekends, when she could separate the man she worked with from the man she slept with, cooked with, laughed with. That was mostly in the beginning. As the months passed she’d realized she didn’t need to separate the two. When she’d gone to his apartment and understood what it was to work with him and not love him. It was impossible.

There had been a change in the air this morning, upstairs, while she was alone with only the shy sunlight. Something had changed. The fear that he would suddenly disappear, that she was living in a dream, had faded away. She supposed that was what had kept her so guarded these past weeks. The instinct for self-preservation innately instilled in all of us had warned her to be careful. Change can happen overnight, change can happen in the blink of an eye, change can be conveyed in only a few words through a telephone line. She knew this now. The fire popped, and she watched the sparks dance behind the glass. On the other side of the room their Christmas tree sparkled. She sat up.

“I forgot! I have a present for you!” she said excitedly. He looked at her with his panic face.

“Your present is, uh-” he started, and she smiled, brushing his nose with hers.

“I got this for you a long time ago. Let me up.” He removed his arm and she got off the couch, went over to the entryway, where her small box of last-minute possessions still sat. She bent down and rifled through, then, dangling the UFO ornament from her index finger, she walked back to him.

His eyebrows rose and he wore a wonky smile. “The shopkeeper must have given an amazing pitch to convince you to buy that.”

She smiled. “No, I picked it out myself.”

He stood and met her halfway across the room. She put it in his palm. He examined the green sparkles, the purple details. “There’s a dent here, Scully. You trying to say something by getting me a damaged UFO?”

She shook her head. “No, that was my fault. Sorry.”

He walked over and put it on the tree where it made a loud statement against the white lights and sparse ornaments. “Thanks, Scully.”

She nodded, then led him back to the couch. It was still so early, they had the whole of Christmas Eve ahead of them. A real snow had fallen overnight, they’d need to shovel the road before driving if they intended to go out at all today. For now all she wanted to do was stay in their new house that smelled of pine and maybe get him to teach her how to operate the stove. She lounged on one side of the couch, feet pulled up and tucked under her and watched him. He sat with his elbows on his knees, hands together, looking slightly tense. Suddenly, he turned to her.

“I don’t know if you remember,” he began, “but that first day, when your Mom came -in Richmond.” She nodded. “She said, uh, she mentioned that I’d asked to marry you.”

She swallowed, but met his eyes, nodded again. “Mul-”

“I was going to ask you, Scully,” he said. Suddenly, he didn’t seem able to meet her eyes. “And then, you know, everything happened.” He seemed embarrassed. “I don’t want you to thi-”

“It’s okay, Mulder,” she interrupted. “Really, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Now he did look at her. He was confused.

“What do you mean?”

“What do _you_ mean?” she asked.

“I was saying, I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about it.” She kept her mouth shut and listened to him, her throat dry. “I don’t know if you ever wanted to, and after everything that happened, if you’d still want to.”

She blinked.  
“Scully, I’m asking you if you want to get married. I want to marry you.”

She ducked her head and closed her eyes at the words, which hung in the air around them like heavy grapes on the vine, threatening to fall. A small smile, then she raised her head and opened her eyes. Mulder was looking at her. She sensed worry in him, buried low as the sea. She nodded, then uncurled herself and moved over to kiss him, cupping his cheek, and their air was wine, warm and blooming in their mouths. When she pulled back the expression on his face -glad as dawn.

“Yes,” she said, in case he needed a verbal confirmation.

“This isn’t at all how I planned to ask you,” he confessed, which made her wonder how he had planned on asking her two years ago. Some grand romantic gesture wasn’t his style, and she would have hated for it to be in public. No, he had wanted to do Christmas together, and ask her then, that’s what she’d thought. It didn’t matter now.

“I don’t care,” she said, running her nose against his for a moment.

“I don’t know what you want, if you want a wedding, or -”

She chuckled in disbelief, “You think I care about a wedding?” and kissed him again, feeling the relief of it all in the way he relaxed against her. How had she expected it to feel? She didn’t know, only that it felt right. When she pulled away and sat back, she opened her mouth and looked at him in shock. “Mulder! Did you do that because you didn’t happen to have a Christmas present for me?”

He froze for a moment, and she burst out laughing, moving to straddle him on the couch, holding his face. He shook his head. “No, of course not, I just-”

“Liar!” she said, looking down at him, biting her lip to hold in more laughter. Finally, his face moved to a grin and she laughed, ruffling his hair, sinking lower into his lap, then jumping back. “Oh, my God, my thighs.”

He chuckled, watching her stand up carefully. She looked down at him.

“Want to learn how to make pancakes again? I thought I had syrup in one of those bags I sent over,” she said, walking to the kitchen. She heard him get up and follow her, and glanced back just in time to yelp as he grabbed her and leaned down to whisper,

“Remember when we used to sit next to each other at the F.B.I?” in her ear. She laughed and ran a hand over his arm crossed over her, remembering. It was bittersweet. Things were so different now.

“Yes,” she said softly, “I remember.” He leaned down to kiss behind her ear and she closed her eyes for a moment, then stroked over his arm again. He let her go, and she went to the fridge for the necessary ingredients.


	13. Chapter 13

After a lazy morning and leftover crispy pizza for lunch, they got into warmer clothes, bundled up, and went outside, walking beside the wood fence, trekking through a few inches of snow. The cows weren't out, and she liked to imagine them warm in their barn, or pen, or however they were kept over at the farm. The dark treeline to their right, the forest she'd dreamt of, and the blue mountains beyond, dusted with a confectioner's sugar coating of snow. Mulder didn't say much, and neither did she. Just walking along, the crunch of virgin snow breaking, the occasional sniff of a runny nose. At the far side of their land now, she looked back at the house. An eel of smoke swimming out from the small chimney, the glow set off by the Christmas tree inside. Their home. She darted her eyes to Mulder, hoping she could catch him unnoticed, but found that he was already watching her. She averted her eyes with an embarrassed breath of a laugh, continued walking.

As they made their way back she couldn't help occasionally glancing at the forest, something nudging at her mind like a goldfish bumping against its bubble of glass. If she went in would she find it there, her bundle of twigs? Was her fire child safe? Had she found a place to keep it? She hated the thought of that fragile flame burning out with no one to feed it twigs and dried grass. She stopped and Mulder, noticing the absence of her footsteps, turned.

"Mulder, I think I'd like to go to Midnight Mass tonight," she said. "I told Mom I wanted to stay home, but she was so happy when I came along last year..."

He nodded. "Sure. We'll have to shovel the driveway a bit. Is it at midnight?"

"It starts at eleven. If I leave around eight-thirty I can get there in time to park and find a seat with them." She saw a contemplative expression on his face. "I'm sorry, I don't have to go. We said we'd spend the day together and go see the family tomorrow."

Mulder looked determined. "No, we should go."  
She raised her eyebrows. "We? You want to go to Midnight Mass?"

He nodded. "Unless you don't want me to."

"No," she spluttered, surprised. "I just didn't think you'd want to. You never said you...I mean..." Had he gone through some sort of religious conversion out there in Texas? He started walking again, and she followed beside him, still surprised.

"Do you..."  
He looked at her while they walked. "No, but you do."

She wondered if he thought she was going to rope him into some large Irish Catholic wedding, when all she really wanted was a justice of the peace and a nice evening to follow.

* * *

She felt shy as she came out of the bathroom, having just finished her makeup, still putting on one of her pearl earrings. When she walked into the bedroom he was choosing between two ties, and held them up for inspection. She pointed to the left. They'd never lived together, and it had felt odd and extremely intimate when she'd gone in to pick out a dress, take a pair of tights out of the top drawer of her dresser. She'd closed the door to the room out of habit and dressed alone while he worked on arranging something in the office. Now he looked up when she walked in, taking her slippers off by the foot of the bed and opening the closet door, bending down to find a pair of heels.

When she stood up and stepped into the first shoe she saw him putting on his jacket. He turned and watched her slip the second shoe on. She stood in front of him, almost waiting for a final verdict. It made her want to laugh.

"You look nice," he said.

She was wearing a modest, long-sleeved dress and dark tights. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, and she had put on the pearl earrings her father had given her after she graduated from the University of Maryland. "I look like a Catholic."

He chuckled, stepping into the hallway. "You think I can fool the bartender?"

She nodded. "I think so. Oh, did you find my coat? The nice one?"  
"It's downstairs."

She looked at her left hand, where a small ring perched on her fourth finger with three small, dark blue sapphires sat in a row. She discovered she'd thrown out the original ring Mulder had bought, apparently stashed in a rolled up pair of socks. If she remembered correctly, she'd donated the socks to a homeless shelter.

"I'll get you another one," he'd promised.  
She shook her head. "No, Mulder, you've already given me so much."

So she took Missy's ring out of her jewelry box while he sat on the bed that morning and held it in her palm, sitting beside him, showing him. "My grandmother willed it down to her. They were close. She wore it all the time." It was small, modest, an antique. She'd slipped it on her finger and held her hand at arm's length, studying it. No, this is what she wanted.

Now, as they were leaving the bedroom she looked down at her hand again. Should she take it off? Was she embarrassed, somehow? Did this go back to the secrecy of being in a relationship with her work partner? She might have to wear gloves if it was cold. What if she lost it, or broke it? She rolled her eyes and followed Mulder down the stairs, flexing her left hand.

Even at ten-fifteen it was almost impossible to find a parking spot near St. Matthew's, and there was a part of her that cringed at the mud across the bumper of her car as they finally parked three blocks away. Mulder's grave was at St. Francis', a smaller church, more secluded. This one had a large congregation already, and tonight everyone had decided to show up. There was less snow here, but still a fair amount, and she hugged her thinner dress coat around her as they walked up to the church. She saw him looking up at the large steeple as they neared the church, families slowly trickling in through the opened, welcoming doors. Was he having second thoughts?

"Mulder, you really don't have to if you don't want to," she said, meaning it.

He shook his head. "No, I want to. I just don't really know what to do."

She chuckled. "Let me tell you a secret: half of these people come to remind the congregation that they're Catholic. I guarantee you after thirty minutes have passed at least one person in our pew will be asleep, and it probably won't be a child."

They went up the stairs carefully, mindful of the snow, then joined the clogged crowd as everyone filtered through like a school of fish. She looked up at the sound of her name.

"Dana! You came!" her mother called, thrilled. She was handing out programs and quickly greeting people, but she brought Dana down for a quick hug, then saw Mulder. "Fox!" The surprise in her voice was evident. "Well, here, take some programs. Ginny grabbed a section of a pew in the middle somewhere."

She watched her mother's eyes move over them quickly, the satisfaction at seeing them together. She felt color in her cheeks and was grateful for her gloves. "Okay," she said, slipping her arm through Mulder's and leading him in, pausing to take off her right glove and cross herself out of habit upon entering. Going down the aisle, scanning the heads and hats for Ginny. After a few minutes, they found her. Reading her program with Lucy beside her, looking around curiously.

"Mulder!" she said excitedly, waving. Ginny turned around at the word, her brows furrowed, and smiled widely when she saw her sister-in-law and Mulder approaching. She stood, a man's coat draped over her shoulders, and waved them in, making room.

"Mom said you weren't coming," she remarked, leaning to kiss Mulder's cheek, then Dana's.

"I changed my mind," she explained, shrugging. "Where's Charlie?"  
"Chatting up the organist. I'll have to go grab him in a minute," Ginny explained.  
"And where's the entourage?" Mulder asked as shuffled into the pew.

Ginny scoffed. "With my parents. I wasn't going to bring the babies to Midnight Mass after last year's disaster, but Lucy wanted to come. It's Tommy's first Midnight Mass as an altar server."

Scully smiled. "I bet Mom's thrilled."

Ginny nodded, and they all sat down. It was cold with the doors still open, but from the speed at which the church was filling up, she thought they might get warm after a while. The candlelight, although bright, made her feel sleepy, the smell of melting wax familiar and reminding her of childhood.

"I didn't know you were Catholic," Ginny remarked, always very direct, leaning over to see Mulder.

"I'm not," he said.

"Me either," Ginny said, shrugging, "but it's fun to sing all the songs and watch people fall asleep. I swear, whatever pot my parents were smoking in the seventies smells exactly like the incense that's about to waft through here."

"Ginny," Scully warned, a smile tugging at her lips.

"What? It's true! Brings back wonderful memories."

Mulder stifled a laugh beside Scully.

"Mommy, where's Daddy?" Lucy asked, pushing herself off the bench and stretching her small arms, yawning. "He said I could sit on his lap."

"He's coming, sweetie," Ginny said, smoothing a hand over her daughter's red-blonde hair. Her own dark hair was braided into a sort of crown around her head.

In time, Charlie did find them again on his own, smiled, and squeezed past them so that he and Mulder bracketed the two women. Scully realized that Mulder would end up sharing a bible with her mother and, not knowing what to do, might feel self conscious. She hoped she wasn't doing it because of her own self consciousness, but they did a quick rearrangement and traded spots with Ginny and Charlie. Propped on his lap, Lucy was able to see better this way. Maggie joined them just as the doors were closing, slipping in to stand next to her son. A hush came over the church just before eleven, everyone making last minute adjustments, taking off coats or putting them on, settling children. Ginny looked down and smiled a little sadly, looking at her sister-in-law's hand.

"Missy's ring," she said.

Scully ran her right thumb over the ring, suddenly remembering, and a flush must have risen to her cheeks because she saw Ginny's mouth fall open a little, her eyes wide. She asked the question with her eyes, and Scully nodded imperceptibly. A full smile from Ginny then, and she wrapped her arm around the back of Scully's waist, leaning in and squeezing gently.

"I'm so happy for you," she said quietly, only loud enough for Scully to hear, and then pulled back. She couldn't tell if Mulder was paying attention to their exchange, but then the organ started and the congregation stood, and he followed her lead. Maggie, Charlie, and Ginny leaned and bent down to watch Tommy come down the aisle, grinning at him. He was so focussed on carrying out his role that when his mother hissed "Tommy!" from out of the pew he didn't look up. Charlie then leaned over his wife a little.

"Reminds me of someone," he whispered. Scully thought back to her days as an altar girl, from eighth grade through high school. Midnight Mass was the culmination of a year's work, and something that normally went right always went wrong. And a fair few of the younger ones fell asleep.

Mulder followed her lead as they sat and stood, sat and stood, knelt, sang. She mouthed the words at first. Most years she attended, she sang. It didn't matter what your voice sounded like, it was Christmas, and nobody could hear you anyway. But Mulder was next to her, looking at his program. He didn't know half of the religious carols, two of which were sung in Latin. He gave her a curious look after the first three, watching her pronounce the lyrics in a soft voice. His eyes on hers. _I dare you._

She breathed out a nervous laugh and started singing. Since he was the nearest to her, Mulder got the full blast of her poor singing voice, but he didn't make fun of her, just smiled an amused smile. The scent of incense against the warm light of the candles relaxed her on the bench, and during the short sermon she felt herself doze a little against Mulder's shoulder. He nudged her awake for the next part. She wasn't alone. Lucy was now completely asleep, slouched against her father's chest, the excitement of staying up past eight o'clock had worn off.

During the Peace, she used 'Merry Christmas' instead of 'Peace be with you', and shook hands with the people around her. She sensed a feeling of awkwardness beside her, and reached her right hand down to brush her fingers against his during the next carol. It was a long Mass, and probably overwhelming for someone who had never been to Mass before in the first place, but he was doing all right. He didn't recite the prayers, and she hadn't expected him to. Ginny did, next to her, but she'd confessed her reasoning to Dana and Melissa one year -it kept her awake.

She hesitated before Communion, turning to Mulder. "If you want you can go up to receive a blessing," she said.

"I'll wait for you," he said, and she nodded, following her family out of the pew, a sleepy Lucy holding her grandmother's hand and shuffling along with the others. The church was beautiful, and even in the night the candlelight managed to illuminate the bottom halves of the stained glass. Intricate carvings into the stone of the church between the windows. Saints, apostles, delicate gilded angels above, the cherubim and seraphim. Her eyes lingered on the angels. Could it have been divine intervention that had aided in bringing him back to her?

The bruised eyes, the bruised mouth, lips dark as if he'd been drinking ink.

_'His eyes...'_  
The most diabolical thing she had ever seen.

_'MULDER! GODDAMN IT, MULDER!'_

A cold shudder passed through her. A curse that damned God. The things she'd thought as his body was lowered into the ground...Trying to justify the existence of a God that could let Mulder get so lost that he'd kill himself. Was it the Devil, then? What was the point of a Devil if there was a God like that? Maybe there was just the Devil, the real God of this world. Or maybe there was nothing at all...

Last year at Midnight Mass she'd weighed ten pounds less and moved slowly, like an old woman, sitting in the pew instead of kneeling, because all the standing and kneeling made her dizzy, even a year after his death. Had she only been going through the motions that night? Reciting prayers by memory with no belief behind them? It didn't matter now. Tonight, she had everything she wanted in the world, except perhaps a child. It was astounding how much she had to be grateful for. She felt warmth in her left palm, and pretended to cup her little shy flame, to chase out the dark with light.

She felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, but moved along with her family to receive the Sacrament. Tommy was holding the bowl of wafers. She gave him a quick smile, but his freckled face remained serious, concentrating on his task. On the way back she couldn't help looking at the angels again. The seraphim, the fiercest of them, the holiest.

When she shuffled into the pew again and sat next to Mulder he looked at her curiously. "What were you looking at?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. Don't worry, it's almost over now."

He put a hand up to touch her face, smoothing a tear from the corner of her eye she hadn't felt fall, but not asking her if she was all right. She thought if he had she would have really started crying, and maybe even kissed him, two things that definitely didn't go along with Midnight Mass.

The last carol was 'Silent Night', and she was surprised to hear Mulder sing along beside her. His voice wasn't half bad! She smiled at him while she sang, still hopelessly off-key, and he shrugged.

The service finally came to a close half an hour after midnight, and the rest of the family shooed them along, they still needed to wait for Tommy. Mulder still had to drive Scully home tonight, and drive them back tomorrow afternoon. They said their goodbyes, and when Charlie hugged his sister he said 'Congratulations' quietly, not knowing if she wanted to make a big deal out of it. She didn't know if Ginny had told him, or if he'd seen the ring, but she didn't feel as exposed as she thought she would. Her mother picked up on it, though, and looked at her daughter. She held up her left hand wordlessly, and her mother's eyes misted over.

"Missy's ring," she said quietly, running her older, wrinkled hand over her daughter's, then clasping it. She pulled Dana in for a hug and kissed her cheek, then did the same to Mulder, but held him a little longer. Scully didn't think she'd seen her mother ever wear the expression she wore now. Grief for her first daughter, and joy for her second at the same time. She didn't say a word to them, but squeezed Dana's hand and let them go. Their walk back to the car was quiet, and Scully exhaled a little in relief once they were buckled up and backing out of the spot.

"Are you glad you went?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the road as he navigated around cars.

She nodded. "I am. I always forgot how much it wears you out. You survived, though."

"There was a very strict old lady wearing a fur and heavy perfume sitting next to me. I wouldn't have been surprised if she maimed me for bad behavior."

She chuckled. "I didn't notice her."  
"She kept shushing her grandkids next to her."

"I didn't know you could sing," she said, watching him. "I mean, I've heard you sing in the shower a few times."

"Are you saying my shower singing is subpar?" he asked, grinning.  
She shook her head, amused.  
"I didn't know Ginny wasn't Catholic," he said. "I just thought because-"

"Because they've got four kids?" she smiled. He nodded, perhaps a little embarrassed. "I don't know, I've never asked. I don't think Charlie would ever insist on not using birth control. Plus, they had been married for five years before Tommy was born." She looked out the window for a moment. "I think they're just good at making babies. And they're wonderful parents."

He looked at her when they stopped at a red light and tucked some hair behind her ear, not saying anything. She kicked off her shoes, stretched her toes, and yawned. "Do you want to listen to some music on the way back?"

"Sure. What are my options?"  
She opened the glove compartments and sorted through the CDs, finally holding up three choices. He glanced over and winced.

"Tough choices. But I'll let you have The Smiths, Scully."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise, figuring he'd go for The Stones, then fed the CD in, turning the volume down a bit in case they wanted to talk. But they didn't. She just lay her head back on the head rest, pulled her coat over her like a blanket, and looked at the road, occasionally watching his face as he drove. The album played on, and her eyes were just beginning to feel heavy when she saw a large eighteen-wheeler coming toward them on the quiet road, high beams on, blinding them.

_And if a ten-ton truck_

_Kills the both of us..._

She sat up quickly as she saw the truck crossing over into their lane, coming straight at them, she couldn't see a thing.

_To die by your side_  
 _Well, the pleasure, the privilege is_ -

"Mulder!" she yelled, but it was too late.

A hand on her shoulder, brushing hair back from her face. "Scully?" Mulder's voice. She opened her eyes. "Hey, you okay?" He was looking at her, concerned, driving one-handed. She opened her mouth, wanting water. He took his hand away from her face and put it back on the wheel, looked at the road, then glanced at her. She took a few deep breaths while he turned off the CD player. "You must have had a bad dream."

She sat up, wide awake. "Yeah, bad dream."

"Want to talk about it?"

She shook her head and checked the pocket of her coat for her little flame. She wanted to hold it in her hand. There it was! The thought of it made her palm feel warm. Her racing heart slowed, and she held her hand close to her. She imagined the flame flickering, then growing stronger, steadier. Her little light that would never go out.

"We're almost home," Mulder said, reaching over to run a hand along her arm to comfort her.

They'd left the Christmas tree's lights plugged in but closed the vent to the wood burning stove before leaving, which slowly extinguished the fire. By the time they got home the house was still warm, but not warm enough for her to feel comfortable in only her dress and tights. By the light of the tree she walked through the house and up the stairs, Mulder following. In the bedroom she undressed slowly, hanging up her dress coat and dress, quickly finding pajamas and slipping out of her tights, putting them in the laundry bin by the closet. He was getting into his own pajamas when she left to go to the bathroom. She removed her makeup, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and applied a moisturizer. The smell of incense lingered, caught in her hair. She shuffled back to the bedroom and went to the bed, finding a pair of socks waiting for her on her side.

Mulder had his turn in the bathroom while she pulled on the socks and climbed into bed, the cold sheets smelled vaguely of sex and soap from their shower last night. She was grateful for the bed, the same one they'd slept in when she lived in Georgetown. Something to ground her in this new life. Mulder came back from the bathroom in his flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt.

"Aren't you cold?" she whispered as he got in bed.

"Nope, I've got a little hot water bottle right next to me," he said, pulling her close.

She shivered. "I'm freezing. Mulder, let's bring up the heater."

He kissed her mouth, her jaw, by her ear, distracting her. She sighed. "Mulder, I love you, but I'm too tired."

She heard him grin in the dark. "Relax, I'm just trying to warm you up."

She sighed again, then focused on his mouth on her neck, her collar bones. He unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt and kissed her chest, the tops of her breasts, over her heart. A hand snuck up under the fabric to stroke along her side. She did feel warmer, but if he didn't stop soon she'd start feeling something else, so she gently guided his head back up, kissed him softly.

"Better?" he asked. She nodded, pressing herself closer and stroking her nose with his. His right hand was still under her shirt, and he stroked her side again, this time to comfort her. "You sure you're okay? That dream really shook you up."

"I dreamed that we were in a car crash. That we died together," she confessed.

His hand, warm on her skin. "Nobody's dying around here," he said. "Relax. Go to sleep."

* * *

They arrived at Charlie and Ginny's townhouse a little after lunch on Christmas Day. Their tree, a real one, was drooping with ornaments, there weren't two that looked the same. Hand-painted strips of paper had been cut and made into a long, elaborate paper chain that wound around. Strings of cranberries and popcorn woven in along with sparkling lights. The second the door opened she smelled it, the particular smell of a Scully Christmas. Gingerbread, beeswax, and cooked apples.

Lucy opened the door, then clapped her hands. "Aunt Dana! Mulder!" She was wearing a four year-old sized onesie that doubled as a lion costume. Tommy slid into the hallway.

"Presents!"  
As Scully stepped over the threshold and into the house she was soon swarmed with children.

"Santa got lost and left some presents at our house!" she was saying, holding presents out of reach. Her nieces and nephew laughed, protested.

"No, those are presents from you and Mulder!" Tommy insisted.

"Really? Because we heard you didn't want any presents this year!" Scully said, still holding two presents out of reach. Lucy was pulling on Mulder's coat, looking at the presents in his hands. "We didn't get you anything. Santa told us we had to bring the presents over."

"He told you?" Sophie asked, wide-eyed.

She nodded very seriously, and then Sophie was rewarded with a present. Mulder handed Tommy his, and Scully handed Lucy hers. They ran to open them while she and Mulder took off their coats, handing them to Ginny, who breezed in, typically at ease and dressed like she'd somehow time traveled out of the 1970s.

"You just missed my parents," she said, grabbing hangers, taking coats and scarves.

"I'm sorry," Scully apologized, "we would have come earlier if we'd known."

Ginny waved. "No, it's fine. They send their congratulations, by the way. We tried to keep your return from the dead vague, Mulder."

He smiled. "I should come up with some business cards to hand out whenever someone asks." Scully cocked her head. It wasn't an all together horrible idea.  
"Come on," Ginny said excitedly, "Santa brought you some presents, too."

Scully opened a large, soft package with her mother beside her on the sofa, Tommy on her other side, leaning over to watch.

"Oh, Mom, it's beautiful!" she said, running her hands over the fabric of the patchwork quilt, the careful stitching. It was heavy enough to sleep under and remain warm. She looked at the quilt folded neatly over the back of one of the armchairs in the living room. "But how did you-"

"I managed. Ginny helped a bit as well, and some of the ladies at book club. It takes a village." Her mother had sewn a quilt for Bill when he married Tara, Charlie was next, and now her. They were all unique. Growing up, she and Missy had slept under a quilt in the winter when they were still little enough to share a bed. A quilt their grandmother had sewn. Every time it frayed, their mother sewed it good as new.

"Thank you," she said, full of emotion, hugging her mother. "Mulder, look."

He looked up from where he was currently talking with Charlie across the room. His eyes brightened. "Mrs. Scully, you made that?"

She nodded proudly. "Even with your stove, that house could get cold."

"The honeymoon phase is already fading," Scully joked. That morning, Mulder refused to get out of bed, so she'd gone to get him socks and a sweatshirt, then promised to make coffee if he'd get the stove going. Then they'd sat on the couch, shivering slightly and drinking hot coffee while the room warmed. "But I think a few more days will convince Mulder to at least bring out the space heater."

"I know better ways to get warm!" Charlie offered, and Ginny laughed, slapping his arm. He wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her. Scully glanced at her mother, who pursed her lips slightly, even though a smile tugged at the edges. She knew her mother had been relieved when Charlie and Ginny had finally gotten married. The amount of times she'd caught them necking during high school escalated to the point of the Scully family saving up all year to afford to send Charlie to a music intensive during the summer months his junior year.

"Open your gift, Fox," her mother said. He moved to look under the tree, scanning the unopened packages. "It's the small box, right next to -yes, that one."

He picked it up and came to squeeze in beside Tommy, who just moved over onto Scully's lap. She rested her chin on his shoulder and watched Mulder take off the ribbon and rip open the paper. Inside was a white box. He opened it and there, nestled over some pillowed fake straw was a matchbox. The lights gleamed off the copper box, larger to accommodate the longer matches needed to light the fire. In one of the bottom corners his initials were engraved, F.M.

He looked up at Maggie. "Thank you," he said, taking it out of the box. It looked sturdy and delicate all at once. "It's beautiful."

"Now, don't leave it on the stove," her mother started. Tommy took the matchbox out of Mulder's hand and slid out the drawer, revealing a simple Bic lighter, turning the box over in his hand. "Store it in the kitchen, or something."

He nodded. "I will." Ginny moved forward and crouched in front of Dana, holding her hand out to her son.

"Let me see," she said, and Tommy put it in her palm. She smiled. "Wow, it's beautiful."

"Scully?" Mulder asked, a hand on her arm. Her eyes were glued to the box. "You okay?"

Tommy hopped off her lap and turned to look at her. After a beat, she recovered. "Yeah, I'm fine. I guess that'll motivate you to get up and light the fire in the morning."

He nodded. "I'm still determined to live without that space heater." He thanked her mother again, then got up from the couch and went to rejoin Charlie across the living room to carry on their conversation. Scully kept her hands on the quilt folded across her knees.

The matchbox from her dream. She hadn't looked very carefully, and it had been smaller, but she had quickly taken note of its beauty, the way the small amount of light had danced off its edges like bouncing stars. Rubbing the stones together hadn't worked, but the match had drawn a flame almost immediately.

After the excitement of presents, hot chocolate, and an early dinner, it was time to go home. Goodbyes were said, promises to the kids that they'd be able to come and play in the large yard soon, a kiss on baby Katherine's tiny cheek. Scully had the quilt in a large gift bag along with a new scarf, two books, and three pieces of children's artwork.

"You go on, honey, I want to talk to Fox for a moment," her mother said. Scully's eyes lingered on them for a moment, but she shrugged and hefted her load to the car, opening the back seat and setting the bag down. Once in the passenger seat she watched Mulder come out to the car. He got in and set his own bag of gifts on the back seat, then started the car.

"What was that about?" she asked.

"She told me I could call her 'Mom' now," he said, his voice thick. She felt her heart clench, knowing how much the gesture meant to him, and how happy her mother probably was to invite him further into the family. She would have given a lot to have been able to see his expression in that moment.

"Will you?" she asked, curious.

He looked at her, smiling a little. "I don't know. It's weird. Six years of 'Mrs. Scully' sort of sticks with you. Not to mention all the bad news I've had to give her."

Her eyes softened. "Good news, too, Mulder." He shrugged.

"Does it bother you that she calls you 'Fox'?" she asked. She thought back to her outburst in that morgue locker room, never wanting him to call her by her first name. Should she change that now? Did she want him to call her 'Dana'? Before, it had been reserved for family and friends. But he was her family now, wasn't he? Somehow, 'Scully' felt more intimate between them. She wouldn't change it.

He shook his head. "No, not at all."

"Fox." She tested it on the tongue. The soft sound of the F followed by the knife between her teeth sound of the X. It tasted strange. "No." She shook her head, a soft smile. "I could never."

The routine of getting ready for bed repeated itself exactly like the night before, only tonight she banished her tiredness to some far corner of her mind and waited for him to come join her. He turned off the light and climbed in, then pulled her close. She stroked his hair for a moment.

"Mulder, I'm cold," she purred into his ear, and laughed when he turned to immediately flip on the bedside lamp he had just turned off.

"Oh, thank God," he growled into her neck, pulling her on top of him. She closed her eyes through his kisses, his hands fumbling at the buttons on her pajama shirt, and reached her hand down, her fingertips slipping under the waistband of his own pajamas, the boxers underneath. The hitch of his breath as she scooted further down to stroke him, the way he said her name when, after a few minutes, her mouth replaced her hand.

When she felt his hands tightening in her hair she let him slip out of her mouth and crawled back over him, flushed from her chest to her cheeks, finishing his sloppy job at her shirt with one nimble hand. He pushed it off her shoulders, his mouth on her breasts while she struggled out of the sleeves.

They made love freely, not sparing each other, groaning, calling out. She didn't try to muffle her sounds, as she often had in bed with him after the September morning she'd miscarried in his apartment. He'd asked if he'd been too rough with her, and she'd thought back to the delicious feel of him all the way inside her, buried to the hilt, the strength with which they'd both made love that night. Of course it hadn't been his fault, but after that night he'd been extremely careful with her, careful to the point of frustration.

"Harder," she'd encouraged, the first time they slept together after the miscarriage.

"I don't want to hurt you," he'd said, the veins in his neck tense from holding back.

"You won't hurt me," she'd promised, and he'd given in. But from then on, up until the suicide, she'd tried to be quieter, to not make any noise sound like pain. Even last night, with his mouth between her legs, she'd muffled her cries into the sheets. And after, warm from the shower, her mouth tucked into his neck or shoulder.

But tonight she forgot. The suicide had bruised her heart forever, but he couldn't hurt her. She even thought her lack of inhibition turned him on -perhaps he'd forgotten the sound of her voice, naked and bare with pleasure. She didn't have anything to hide from him now. The look in his eyes when she cried out his name, called to God, a thrill in those mossy irises.

"Still cold?" he asked afterward, propped on his side, watching her lay on her back, trying to catch her breath like a lost fish on the dock. She threw him a look.

"No," she said, her throat sore. She looked surprised, a hand on her neck. "Was I loud?"

He smiled. "At least we don't have any neighbors."

She closed her eyes and laughed a little, then pulled up the sheet, kicked down to the foot of the bed in the wildness of before.

"Did you have a Merry Christmas?" he asked, and she chuckled again, eyes still closed.  
"Yes, I had a Merry Christmas, Mulder. I had a Happy New Year, too. You're very thorough."

When he curled around her, the blankets back over them, he kissed the spot behind her ear. "I have to get up early tomorrow."

"That's right," she said, remembering that it would be his first day back. No rest for the wicked. "How do you feel?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. I'll report back tomorrow night around seven."  
"Oh, and I suppose you'll expect dinner on the table, too?"  
He chuckled. "I'm told that's what wives do for husbands, right?"  
She tapped his arm, crossed over her. "First of all, I won't be. And second of all, we're not married."

He was quiet for a moment. "You were serious, right? When you said yes?"

She turned a little. "I wore a ring to Midnight Mass, Mulder. And my mother practically cried she was so happy. Of course I was serious."

"She's just happy you won't continue living in sin," he joked.

She turned fully in his arms and put her palm on his cheek. "My family loves you, Mulder. They're not happy for me. They're happy for us." She kissed him. "I hope you know that."

He nodded. She turned back around, content in his arms, and together they fell asleep into dreams.

* * *

In her dream she was lost on a snowy road, beside her the deep forest.

A shelter.

She didn't know why, but she had to build one. She needed to stop reeling with panic, and take some action before dark caught her and the cold cracked her bones. She couldn't just stand there and cry, like an infant expecting someone's large hands to come out of the sky and pick her up, pat her back, say, _There, there._

She had to do something. Or at least try.

She mustered the energy to shuffle off the road into the trees. Before she did, she broke a branch and laid it as a crosspiece astraddle two narrow pines standing side by side at the road's edge like children waiting for their mother outside a bakery. She would look for that, and turn left when she came out. If she came out. She went along, marking her way at eye level every five feet or so by breaking a branch and leaving it hanging like an arm. She must not become lost. The idea was as dreadful as freezing to death. Worse than dying. She would go mad. She was already halfway there.

She crashed through the close-spaced trees, and the snowy boughs snapped back, lashing her face. She could barely see, and didn't know quite what she was looking for until she saw a fallen pine snagged in the branches of another -the triangular shape of a shelter. A frail hope kindled within her. If only she could summon the energy...She began to collect sticks and branches, fallen wood, everything she could see that she could move. Her hands were clumsy with cold, her eyes watered and ice formed on the lash tips. Her feet were frozen in her boots. Luckily there was a good deal of fallen wood. Clumsily, she dragged lumber into a heap, resting with her hands on her knees, head down, gasping, before she began again.

A flash of rust-red, like a scarf in the wind, hiding behind a tree.

She chose the straightest branches and leaned them at intervals against the fallen tree, awkwardly pressing them into the ground with her boot. The wind was quiet here in the trees, but every movement was hard. It was as if she were trying to build a hut on Jupiter. Now that she was building, though, slow and difficult as it was, she felt determination harden within her, pushing despair aside an inch or two so she could breathe.

_Who are you kidding? This isn't going to save you. Why bother?_

"I'm not listening," she said out loud. Grimly, she labored on. It was the hardest work she had ever done, surviving. She wrestled with a longish branch, trying to break it across her knee. She finally propped it in the snow and broke it with her boot, laying it on the growing skeleton of her hut.

Now she had sticks on both sides of the center pole, low at the foot and higher at the top, the whole thing reminiscent of the spine and ribs of a fish on a plate. Not a very impressive structure, but night was the only thing on her mind. She broke boughs from limb after limb, layered them onto the skeleton until she'd got it fairly covered. She set aside boughs of springy fir for her bed -she couldn't lie on frozen ground, it would leech out every bit of heat from her body in the night. Sticks to weigh down the boughs, boughs to fill in between the sticks. Toward the end, she was throwing anything and everything into her construction.

She crawled inside to claw away the frozen leaves and snow, tossing the debris backward like a dog digging out a badger, then stuffed in the springy fir boughs, as many as she could cram inside, matting them down with her knees as she went. She lay on this green bed to see how it would be to spend the night there. It was dark and cold and smelled of must and sweet, aromatic evergreens.

When she crawled out there it was, peeking out from behind a thick trunk, the face of a fox, curious but cautious eyes. She didn't move.

"Have you come to help me?"  
The animal didn't move either, just watched her. What was she doing, talking to animals in a forest?

She added another layer of smaller boughs for good measure, even scooping frosty armloads of leaves and decomposing wood to seal over the whole mess like frosting on a cake. When she was done, it looked like a fort, or a brush pile waiting for a match. Did she really think this pile would keep her from freezing?

The sweat she'd worked up was beginning to freeze. She had to get a fire going. Wearily, she collected dead boughs from the underbranches of the pines. They seemed reasonably dry, though her frozen fingers could barely manipulate them. She was getting fuddled, her mind icing over like her gloves.

She piled up the kindling and stood, trying to remember what to do next, as snow fell onto her camp and the wind roared overhead in the pines. She dug out a spot a foot or two from the opening with heel of her boot and made a little pile of kindling there, tenting it with sticks. It still didn't look  
right. Rocks. She needed to circle it with rocks. She stomped around, irrationally furious that she had one more damned thing to do, kicked out some rocks, carried them to her pathetic pile of twigs, and laid them in a circle.

That was it, she could do no more.

She took out her matches from her jacket pocket, removing her gloves, and knelt to this crude altar. Saying a short prayer, she struck a match. It broke and flew off into the snow. She now had only five. There could be no more mistakes. The second match she dropped twice just trying to hold it. It took all her effort to keep it between her fingers. Her mind knew what it was doing, but her hands wouldn't cooperate. Her teeth were chattering hard enough to break, and her hand was shaking so badly she had to stop, put the matches back in her pocket and stick her poor paws under her armpits to warm them. She rubbed them together and tried again, struck the match on the rock, gently, once, twice. It lit. She put it to the kindling, but it guttered out.

She started to cry. She didn't even bother wiping her tears. She had to do this, crying or not. She had to survive.

A nudge on her arm, and she looked down to see the cautious little fox's long nose, its feet hidden in snow. It looked hungry. She didn't want it to come inside, or scratch her, even if it was hungry and cold. This was her shelter. Yet she was curious, and she brought her trembling palm down and touched its cunning head, expecting it to startle, dart away, or bite her. Instead it looked at her and, to her amazement, its coat gleamed copper. Her mouth opened in surprise, and it leaned forward tentatively, stepping closer to her sad pile of twigs, sniffing it. She lit the third match and holding one hand in the other to stabilize her grip, lowered the match to the pile.

The ecstasy, to see flame lacing through the tiny twigs! Her fire child. She looked at the gleaming ox in amazement, and it lingered a moment, before darting away to stand at a distance, like a sentry. She fed the fire tenderly, a bird feeding its nestling, an inch of dried twig at a time. Once or twice, she did so clumsily and watched in horror as it guttered, shrank, threatening to die. She breathed on it as if it were the flame of life itself. The relief as the heavenly streaks of red and orange crept back. Carefully she fed it slightly larger, finger-size twigs, trying not to topple the cone of sticks, which was starting to glow. She braced a couple of flat pieces of bark against the small tepee and -heaven!- they, too, began to smolder, and with a bit of breath, ignite.

Only then did she dare put her gloves back on, and she forced herself to use the last morsels of daylight to collect firewood, reluctant to move away from her fire child, to leave it vulnerable to the wind, which was getting worse. When she returned, she felt warmth radiating from the stones and understood their purpose. And, while she tended to the fire and it grew stronger, it occurred to her that she just might survive this. An hour or two ago, she was ready to die. Then the fox had revealed itself, nudged her, encouraging. And she'd made the fire. Who would have guessed she had it in her?

She woke alone, dawn only a slice of lavender at the horizon bleeding up into a dark blue sky like watercolors. From downstairs the smell of coffee, buttered bread, and burning pine. She dressed quickly and went down. The couch looked more inviting than the kitchen, and she went to sit down, pulling her feet under her and closing her eyes for a moment as the heat of the stove licked at her face, wrapping the instantly precious quilt around her. She stayed for a good five minutes, thinking how lovely it might be to sleep here one night. The sound of the refrigerator opening and closing. She turned to look over into the kitchen. He was already dressed for work, and she did a double take, her heart clenching as she watched him take a sip of coffee. She imagined herself waking up in Georgetown, getting dressed, going to work, and seeing him there in the basement. Ready to go over a new case with her. Another slideshow. His feet on the desk, maybe. He looked up from his coffee and saw her watching him. A little quirk of a smile. She realized he knew exactly what she was thinking. He left the kitchen and headed to the bathroom down the hall.

Sufficiently defrosted, she got up from the couch and left the quilt behind, going to the kitchen. She poured herself some coffee and took a sip, then left her mug on the counter to go and look out the window. When she looked over to the farm she saw smoke rising from their chimney as well -early risers. The flush of the toilet, running water, and then he was coming back to the kitchen. She didn't startle when he moved behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, weaving under hers. He kissed the crown of her head and she leaned back into him, her own hands coming to rest on top of his where they folded over her middle. Mulder swayed them a little, like a dance, trying to cheer her up. She turned around in his arms, wrapping her own around him and looking up into his eyes.

"What is it?" he asked, keeping a hand on her back but smoothing a thumb over her cheekbone.

She shook her head, and rolled on her heels a little. He took her cue and leaned down to kiss her. Just a good morning kiss, although perhaps she did linger longer than she usually did. The same thumb on her jaw. She broke away and hugged him again, very close, her face buried in his chest. A memory of another day, another life in which they'd shared an embrace in her kitchen and then he'd gone away to make sure everything was okay. And of course, none of it had been okay. The end of that embrace brought the beginning of a two year hell. This morning he hummed in contentment and stroked her back, her waist.

"Mm, you're so warm," he said, and she finally leaned back, a sudden thought crossed her mind.

Maybe she was the lantern, a spark buried deep within her, soon to ignite and bloom into the precious flame she'd held in her palms. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Only now there were no ashes, there was only the birth of flame after the match strike. It was just like starting over, no more Nothing Days, just Growing Days ahead. The seraphim, those fiery angels, could only envy them now. Here, in this world that could be so cruel, in which humans are so vulnerable, two broken souls had crawled through the muddy tunnels of darkness, pain, and grief, and found each other again.

She looked up at him, her own copper-coated fox, and felt a particular strain of joy -life, love, how the two could so easily be lost and found. Her love for him, how it filled her up. Life, how it could come and go so easily. Her eyes filled with tears. Him coming back to her alive, their new life together, and the little life she now knew they had made the night she first had the dream. Her little fire child, flickering, fragile, but warm and safe deep within her.

_The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper_ , she'd recited to him one amber night in their other life. Poets are the spies of the world, and every sentence is a clue. Had she known, then, on the night she'd told him she loved him? It didn't matter now. The gauze-veiled future bowed before her like a vision of promise, and she closed her eyes, pressing a kiss to his chest, sealing her love on his heart.


End file.
